How to motivate collective action on climate

Optimism over anger

After the intervention phase, participants had the opportunity to take or commit to any of three action types. The researchers grouped actions such as signing up for a climate organization’s newsletter, sharing a video calling for collective climate action, or committing to attend climate-related demonstrations into a “public awareness” bucket. They grouped political actions such as signing a petition, writing a letter to a representative, or committing to support “climate-friendly” politicians into a second bucket. Finally, they grouped financial actions such as donating to climate organizations or committing to divest from banks that invest in fossil fuels. 

The most effective intervention overall – combining evidence of impact with social and emotional benefits – increased willingness to take public awareness actions by 30% and political actions by nearly 14%. Moral framing around purity and sanctity, emphasizing preservation of America’s pristine places and sacred national monuments, raised financial advocacy by about 13%. Interventions that relied on negative emotions like guilt and anger were less effective on average. 

The researchers were surprised to find virtually no change in participants’ commitments to taking collective climate action when interventions emphasized co-benefits of addressing climate change, such as how reducing pollution improves human health or investing in renewable energy leads to economic growth. 

“It feels intuitive that co-benefits should motivate people – why wouldn’t we solve climate change if it’s also going to solve health care and the economy? But we found null results in all categories when using this strategy,” Vlasceanu said. 

Motivating long-term change

In previous research, Vlasceanu has examined what motivates people to take individual climate actions, such as recycling or eating less red meat. While there is some overlap, the primary motivating factors for individual actions center around how difficult they are to implement. The new study provides evidence that collective climate action may be more motivated by knowledge of how effective the action can be. 

“When you want to do something about climate and it’s personal, you primarily do the things that are easy,” Vlasceanu said. “When you want to do something about climate and it’s collective, you definitely want to do the thing that will work.”

The interventions were fairly short – 10-15 minutes each – so the researchers expect they will only create short-term changes in participant behavior. But Vlasceanu and her team are working on creating and testing longer interventions. With support from the Doerr School of Sustainability’s Discovery Grant program, Vlasceanu and co-author Sara Constantino, assistant professor of environmental social sciences, are developing a documentary based on the principles of the most successful interventions. They intend to follow participants over several years to understand effects on behavior over time. 

They’ve also created an interactive web tool to help other researchers explore their data. The tool allows users to see which interventions worked best for particular age groups, income levels, political ideologies, and other categories. Vlasceanu hopes it will be useful for her fellow scientists as well as for groups looking to increase climate engagement. 

“Climate change is a collective problem and individual solutions alone are inadequate for addressing it,” Vlasceanu said. “This could help practitioners get a flavor of what kinds of messages resonate with their target audience to inspire collective action.”