For Climate Action, Emotion Beats Plain Facts, Study Finds

Public authorities and organizations spend millions each year on campaigns meant to encourage climate action. Until now, there has been little large-scale evidence on which communication strategies actually work best. A team at the University of Geneva's (UNIGE) Consumer Decision and Sustainable Behavior Lab has conducted what it says is the first large-scale study of its kind, analyzing and combining the results of 71 existing studies that together drew on data from 216,000 participants. The work is published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

The researchers reviewed 15 different communication approaches, ranging from providing factual information to appealing to emotions such as wonder or awe at the beauty of nature, as well as strategies that highlight the health or financial consequences of climate change. "Our research shows that almost all of these strategies are likely to have a positive effect on people's intentions and behaviors, as well as on their support for climate policies," said Tobias Brosch, the lab's director, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Mario Herberz. The exception was messages based on individual or collective responsibility, such as "success depends largely on you," which had little or no effect and could even backfire.

Campaigns that evoke a strong emotional response, particularly through storytelling or by inspiring a sense of wonder at nature, were significantly more effective than simply presenting facts and scientific evidence, the researchers found. Messages that appealed to moral, ethical or religious values, emphasizing a connection to something greater than oneself, also performed better, as did messages that included images.

"Despite these differences, the fact that almost all of these strategies can have a positive effect is encouraging," Brosch said. He noted that the studies reviewed mostly measured the impact of a single exposure to a message, while repeated exposure is known to strengthen its effect. "At a time when the scientific evidence is well established and the challenge is to turn knowledge into action, there is considerable scope to improve climate communication."