Addressing climate change with behaviourial science

What motivates humans to engage in activism and work for social change? Even when confronted with a consequential global issue like climate change, it is unclear what will inspire people to change their beliefs and behaviors. A global megastudy of nearly 60,000 participants tested which interventions are most likely to encourage action to address climate change.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) psychology professor Michael Schmitt and PhD candidate Annika Lutz contributed to the study. The collaborative research, Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries, was one of the top cited papers from SFU in 2024. It was organized by Madalina Vlasceanu, Kimberly Doell, and Jay Van Bavel at New York University, and included the participation of over 200 researchers.

Schmitt teaches and researches the application of social psychology to climate change and climate justice. He also leads the Sustainability, Identity and Social Change Lab, whose work includes social identity theory, environmental sustainability and environmental activism. Lutz’s research focuses on the psychology of environmental collective action and she is interested in research that supports the climate justice movement.

The megastudy tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions in an online survey. Each participant was assigned at random to receive one of the interventions or to be in a control condition that did not contain a climate change intervention. All participants were asked whether they believed “climate change poses a serious threat to humanity,” how much they supported climate change mitigating policies (for example, carbon tax), and whether they would share information about climate change on social media. Although the three outcomes were affected differently by different interventions, four interventions stood out as being most effective:

• Providing participants with information about examples of successful activism that has shaped climate policy.
  
• Highlighting the effects of climate change locally, and as happening now.
  
• Asking participants to write a “letter to future generations,” describing one’s current climate change mitigation actions.
  
• Asking participants to write a letter from their future self to their present self, imagining what their future self would say regarding the climate actions one should take.

The megastudy involved a large and diverse global sample, across countries, incomes, age and gender, and leveraged a collaborative approach to information gathering. While its findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors, the rich dataset is available online and can be used to assesses interventions for any subsample target of interest.
 

We spoke to Schmitt and Lutz about their research.
 

What was your role in the study, and how did you go about collecting and interpreting the information?

Schmitt: We helped with the design of one of the interventions and were responsible for collecting data from Canadian participants. Like the other collaborating teams, we were able to provide input throughout the course of the project.

The main organizing team conducted the data analysis. The main research question was whether and how much each intervention affected climate beliefs and behaviour compared to receiving no intervention at all.

Based on your research on human behaviour, what insights did you gather from the study? Are there proven ways to encourage humans to take action on climate change?

Lutz: There is no one best way to get people to act on climate change, as what is most successful will depend on context, pre-existing beliefs, who is communicating to whom, and even the kind of action you want people to take. In our lab, we focus on people’s support for activism and social change.

One thing we find interesting about the results of the mega-study are that two of the most successful interventions required participants to engage in future thinking—either writing to someone else in the future, or imagining one’s future self writing to the current self. Both interventions pull people in the direction of the kind of future they want to see, which for most people is not a world of runaway climate change. This resonates with some of our other work, in which we find asking people to spend time imagining what a sustainable world would be like increases their support for environmental activism. It also increases their opposition to new fossil fuel projects.

What do you think are some of the reasons why humans seem to slow to take action on climate change?

Schmitt: The fossil fuel industry and other elite groups have actively lied and hid the truth about how fossil fuels cause global warming. They continue to obscure facts and resist transitioning away from fossil fuels. Energy companies have shown they will not transition voluntarily, and governments have been slow to regulate. Therefore, it will take collective action from masses of people to create change. We hope this project offers insights into how to inspire that action.

Where can researchers find information about the study and its data?

The datasets have been made available online via a web tool, available at https://climate-interventions.shinyapps.io/climate-interventions/.

For more: Visit the Sustainability, Identity and Social Change Lab, and read the study Experimentally elevating environmental cognitive alternatives: Effects on activist identification, willingness to act, and opposition to new fossil fuel projects.

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