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. 2024 Feb 9;10(6):eadj5778.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adj5778. Epub 2024 Feb 7.

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Madalina Vlasceanu  1 Kimberly C Doell  1   2 Joseph B Bak-Coleman  3   4 Boryana Todorova  2 Michael M Berkebile-Weinberg  1 Samantha J Grayson  5 Yash Patel  1 Danielle Goldwert  1 Yifei Pei  1 Alek Chakroff  6 Ekaterina Pronizius  2 Karlijn L van den Broek  7 Denisa Vlasceanu  8 Sara Constantino  9   10 Michael J Morais  11 Philipp Schumann  12 Steve Rathje  1 Ke Fang  1 Salvatore Maria Aglioti  13   14 Mark Alfano  15 Andy J Alvarado-Yepez  16 Angélica Andersen  17 Frederik Anseel  18 Matthew A J Apps  19 Chillar Asadli  20 Fonda Jane Awuor  21 Flavio Azevedo  22 Piero Basaglia  23 Jocelyn J Bélanger  24 Sebastian Berger  25 Paul Bertin  26   27 Michał Białek  28 Olga Bialobrzeska  29 Michelle Blaya-Burgo  30 Daniëlle N M Bleize  31 Simen Bø  32 Lea Boecker  33 Paulo S Boggio  34 Sylvie Borau  35 Björn Bos  36 Ayoub Bouguettaya  37 Markus Brauer  38 Cameron Brick  39   40 Tymofii Brik  41 Roman Briker  42 Tobias Brosch  43 Ondrej Buchel  44 Daniel Buonauro  45 Radhika Butalia  46 Héctor Carvacho  47 Sarah A E Chamberlain  48 Hang-Yee Chan  49 Dawn Chow  50 Dongil Chung  51 Luca Cian  52 Noa Cohen-Eick  53   54 Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta  19   55 Davide Contu  56 Vladimir Cristea  57 Jo Cutler  19 Silvana D'Ottone  58 Jonas De Keersmaecker  59   60 Sarah Delcourt  61 Sylvain Delouvée  62 Kathi Diel  63 Benjamin D Douglas  38 Moritz A Drupp  23   64 Shreya Dubey  65 Jānis Ekmanis  66 Christian T Elbaek  67 Mahmoud Elsherif  68   69 Iris M Engelhard  70 Yannik A Escher  71 Tom W Etienne  57   72 Laura Farage  73 Ana Rita Farias  74 Stefan Feuerriegel  75 Andrej Findor  76 Lucia Freira  77 Malte Friese  63 Neil Philip Gains  78 Albina Gallyamova  79 Sandra J Geiger  80 Oliver Genschow  81 Biljana Gjoneska  82 Theofilos Gkinopoulos  83 Beth Goldberg  84 Amit Goldenberg  85   86   87 Sarah Gradidge  88 Simone Grassini  89   90 Kurt Gray  91 Sonja Grelle  92 Siobhán M Griffin  93 Lusine Grigoryan  94 Ani Grigoryan  95 Dmitry Grigoryev  79 June Gruber  96 Johnrev Guilaran  97 Britt Hadar  98 Ulf J J Hahnel  99 Eran Halperin  53 Annelie J Harvey  88 Christian A P Haugestad  100 Aleksandra M Herman  101   102 Hal E Hershfield  103 Toshiyuki Himichi  104 Donald W Hine  105 Wilhelm Hofmann  92 Lauren Howe  106 Enma T Huaman-Chulluncuy  107 Guanxiong Huang  108 Tatsunori Ishii  109 Ayahito Ito  110 Fanli Jia  111 John T Jost  1 Veljko Jovanović  112 Dominika Jurgiel  113 Ondřej Kácha  114 Reeta Kankaanpää  115   116 Jaroslaw Kantorowicz  117 Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko  118 Keren Kaplan Mintz  119   120 Ilker Kaya  121 Ozgur Kaya  121 Narine Khachatryan  95 Anna Klas  122 Colin Klein  123 Christian A Klöckner  124 Lina Koppel  125 Alexandra I Kosachenko  126 Emily J Kothe  122 Ruth Krebs  127 Amy R Krosch  128 Andre P M Krouwel  129 Yara Kyrychenko  130 Maria Lagomarsino  131 Claus Lamm  2 Florian Lange  61 Julia Lee Cunningham  132 Jeffrey Lees  133   134 Tak Yan Leung  135 Neil Levy  136 Patricia L Lockwood  19 Chiara Longoni  137 Alberto López Ortega  138 David D Loschelder  139 Jackson G Lu  140 Yu Luo  141 Joseph Luomba  142 Annika E Lutz  143 Johann M Majer  144 Ezra Markowitz  145 Abigail A Marsh  146 Karen Louise Mascarenhas  147   148 Bwambale Mbilingi  149 Winfred Mbungu  150 Cillian McHugh  151 Marijn H C Meijers  152 Hugo Mercier  153 Fenant Laurent Mhagama  154 Katerina Michalakis  155 Nace Mikus  156   157 Sarah Milliron  128 Panagiotis Mitkidis  67 Fredy S Monge-Rodríguez  158 Youri L Mora  159   160 David Moreau  161 Kosuke Motoki  162 Manuel Moyano  163 Mathilde Mus  164 Joaquin Navajas  165   166 Tam Luong Nguyen  167 Dung Minh Nguyen  168 Trieu Nguyen  168 Laura Niemi  169 Sari R R Nijssen  170 Gustav Nilsonne  171   172 Jonas P Nitschke  2 Laila Nockur  173 Ritah Okura  149 Sezin Öner  174 Asil Ali Özdoğru  175   176 Helena Palumbo  177 Costas Panagopoulos  178 Maria Serena Panasiti  14   179 Philip Pärnamets  180 Mariola Paruzel-Czachura  181   182 Yuri G Pavlov  183 César Payán-Gómez  184 Adam R Pearson  45 Leonor Pereira da Costa  185 Hannes M Petrowsky  186 Stefan Pfattheicher  173 Nhat Tan Pham  187 Vladimir Ponizovskiy  92 Clara Pretus  188 Gabriel G Rêgo  189 Ritsaart Reimann  136 Shawn A Rhoads  190   191 Julian Riano-Moreno  192 Isabell Richter  193 Jan Philipp Röer  194 Jahred Rosa-Sullivan  195 Robert M Ross  136 Anandita Sabherwal  196 Toshiki Saito  197   198 Oriane Sarrasin  199 Nicolas Say  200 Katharina Schmid  201 Michael T Schmitt  143 Philipp Schoenegger  202   203 Christin Scholz  204 Mariah G Schug  205 Stefan Schulreich  206   207 Ganga Shreedhar  196 Eric Shuman  1   85 Smadar Sivan  208 Hallgeir Sjåstad  32 Meikel Soliman  209 Katia Soud  210   211 Tobia Spampatti  212   213 Gregg Sparkman  214 Ognen Spasovski  215   216 Samantha K Stanley  217 Jessica A Stern  218 Noel Strahm  25 Yasushi Suko  219 Sunhae Sul  220 Stylianos Syropoulos  221 Neil C Taylor  222 Elisa Tedaldi  223 Gustav Tinghög  125 Luu Duc Toan Huynh  224 Giovanni Antonio Travaglino  225 Manos Tsakiris  155 İlayda Tüter  226 Michael Tyrala  227 Özden Melis Uluğ  228 Arkadiusz Urbanek  229 Danila Valko  230   231 Sander van der Linden  232 Kevin van Schie  233 Aart van Stekelenburg  234 Edmunds Vanags  235 Daniel Västfjäll  236 Stepan Vesely  124 Jáchym Vintr  114 Marek Vranka  237 Patrick Otuo Wanguche  21 Robb Willer  238 Adrian Dominik Wojcik  239 Rachel Xu  84 Anjali Yadav  240   241 Magdalena Zawisza  88 Xian Zhao  242 Jiaying Zhao  141   243 Dawid Żuk  244 Jay J Van Bavel  1   32   245
Affiliations

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Madalina Vlasceanu et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Interventions, theoretical frameworks, and brief descriptions.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. Average effects (i.e., posterior estimates using Bayesian regressions) by intervention for each outcome.
Dots indicate the mean, with error bars indicating the 94% credible region. Thicker error bars indicate the interquartile range. Vertical lines indicate control average. (A) Belief, (B) support for policy, (C) willingness to share climate change information on social media, and (D) number of trees planted in the WEPT. Estimates are reported in tables S1 to S4.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.. Marginal effects (as the difference between interventions and control) as a function of estimated preintervention belief in climate change.
Lines indicate the average effect size, with shaded regions indicating the 94% credible region. For visual clarity, regions in which the 94% credible region overlap zero are omitted from the figure. Where interventions have positive and negative effects that meet these criteria, a dashed line is used to connect these regions. The dashed vertical line indicates average belief, where effects in Fig. 1 are estimated. (A) Climate change belief, (B) policy support, (C) sharing information on social media, and (D) trees planted via the WEPT.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.. Country-level means of each outcome variable.
Countries without available data are shown in gray. Statistics are shown in tables S5 to S8. (A) Climate change belief, (B) policy support, (C) sharing information on social media, and (D) trees planted via the WEPT.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.. The number of participants in each of the 63 countries represented in the sample (Ntotal = 59,440).

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