Glaciers shape the landscapes of Spitsbergen, an island of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.Credit: Arterra/Sven-Erik Arndt/UIG/Getty
As warnings about a potential ‘mega’ El Niño grab headlines and spread through social media, communicators face a familiar challenge: how to persuade people to pay attention to climate risks — and act.
Fighting climate change takes more than data — it needs wonder, love and hope
A study, now published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, suggests that emotionally engaging forms of communication are more effective than scientific facts alone in motivating climate action1. But messages focused on individual responsibility had little impact — and sometimes backfired.
“Our findings show that merely providing scientific facts is not the best way to communicate on climate-related issues — you need to connect with people,” says co-author Tobias Brosch, a psychologist at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
“The emotions you feel when you watch a nature documentary, see the Northern Lights or witness the birth of a new animal imbue these events with meaning,” he adds. “They may also drive you to look better after our environment — by volunteering your time, donating or voting for climate-friendly parties.”
Inspiring awe
The study combined and analysed 71 publications, and included at least 216,000 participants who had been involved in experimental tests of the effect of different public communication methods on climate-related behaviours such as making charity donations or stating intentions to reduce their carbon footprint in later interviews.
“We wanted to integrate all the scientific literature that has evaluated climate-change communication formats, and then look at impacts that interested us, which is climate action, climate-policy support or climate intentions,” says Brosch.
Most of the communication strategies went some way towards prompting climate action. Fact-based messaging — such as explaining the greenhouse-gas effect — increased the likelihood of people engaging with climate efforts. But communications designed to evoke emotions, such as awe at the beauty of nature and fear of the threats it is facing, were among the most successful.
The study shows the pivotal role of stories in communication, says Nicholas Epley, a behavioural scientist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in Illinois. “We reason in stories and concrete experiences: facts aren’t nearly as persuasive as individual stories, particularly when there’s distrust,” he says.
The analysis also showed what didn’t work: reminding individuals of their personal responsibility to act on climate change did little to convince people to mobilize and even produced retaliation. This is consistent with what other initiatives have found. For example, during Earth Hour — a global event run by the WWF charity that recommends everyone turn their lights off for an hour — some organizations turn on all their lights in defiance.
“It possibly creates reactance, mistrust or this over-saturation of ‘oh, come on, now this is also my responsibility?’,” says Brosch. “Whereas the ones that worked went via an emotional pathway – ‘look, this is what’s worth fighting for’.”
Thijs Bouman, an environmental psychologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, says that although the study’s effect sizes are relatively small, they can still be meaningful, particularly for large-scale communication activities. “Sometimes governments and decision-makers ask for an intervention that will immediately make a substantial change, but this study shows it is obviously very unrealistic,” he says.
