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

Vlasceanu, Madalina; Doell, Kimberly C; Bak-Coleman, Joseph B; Todorova, Boryana; Berkebile-Weinberg, Michael M; Grayson, Samantha J; Patel, Yash; Goldwert, Danielle; Pei, Yifei; Chakroff, Alek; Pronizius, Ekaterina; van den Broek, Karlijn L; Vlasceanu, Denisa; Constantino, Sara; Morais, Michael J; Schumann, Philipp; Rathje, Steve; Fang, Ke; Aglioti, Salvatore Maria; Alfano, Mark

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adj5778

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 acro