Influencing climate change attitudes in the United States: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Researchers interested in climate change communication have investigated how people respond to messages about it. Through meta-analysis, the current research synthesizes the multitude of experimental studies on this topic to uncover which interventions are most effective at influencing attitudes about climate change. The meta-analysis focuses on experimental studies that included a control condition and measured climate change attitudes among participants in the United States. After a large literature search, 396 effect sizes were retrieved from 76 independent experiments (N = 76,033 participants). Interventions had a small, significant positive effect on attitudes, g = 0.08, 95% CI [0.05, 0.10], 95% prediction interval [-0.04, 0.19], p < .001. Surprisingly, type of intervention was not a statistically significant moderator of this effect, nor was political affiliation. However, type of attitude was a significant moderator: the treatment-control difference in attitudes was smaller for policy support than for belief in climate change, indicating that policy attitudes are more resistant to influence than belief in climate change. Interventions that aimed to induce skepticism (e.g., misinformation) had a significantly stronger average effect on attitudes than did ones that intended to promote belief in climate change, suggesting that belief in climate change is more easily weakened than strengthened.