How to motivate collective action on climate

What does it take to spur individuals to act as a group with a shared purpose on climate change? According to a new Stanford-led study, the key is to show them how collective actions on climate have made a difference and often generate good vibes for participants. 

A decade after nearly 200 world leaders agreed in Paris to limit climate change, solar power has become the fastest-growing source of new electricity and dozens of countries have cut emissions while growing their economies. Globally, emissions from burning fossil fuels – the largest contributor to human-caused climate change – have slowed but not declined. 

“Structural change is truly what’s needed, but you can’t get structural change without individuals demanding it,” said Madalina Vlasceanu, an assistant professor of environmental social sciences in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and senior author of the study, which appears Jan. 27 in the journal PNAS Nexus.

Vlasceanu and her team recruited more than 30,000 U.S. residents to test 17 different psychology-backed interventions intended to encourage people to join a collective climate action, such as participating in a public demonstration or writing to a representative. The interventions featured videos, images, text, and interactive elements, such as prompts to write a short reflection.

The top intervention provided examples of past collective efforts on climate that have influenced public policy, showed a short video conveying the energy at climate marches, and invited participants to recall or imagine forming friendships through climate action. The intervention closed with a message that joining collective actions can boost happiness and build social connections.

“People really engage in collective action if they are made to feel that it will matter, that it will have an impact and create structural change, while also benefiting them personally,” said lead study author Danielle Goldwert, a PhD student at New York University.

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.”

Vlasceanu is also an assistant professor (by courtesy) of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a faculty fellow at Stanford Impact Labs and the Stanford Center for Affective Science.

Stanford co-authors include Robb Willer, professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences; Christoph Semken, a former postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis Center who is now an assistant professor at the University of Toronto; Yash Patel, a PhD student in environmental social sciences in the Doerr School of Sustainability; and Ke Fang, a PhD student in psychology in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Additional co-authors are affiliated with New York University, Princeton University, University of Amsterdam, University of Trento, University of Cambridge, University of Konstanz, Yale University, Copenhagen Business School, University of Canterbury, Global Citizen, Columbia University, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of Queensland, University of California San Diego, Science Po Paris, Slovak Academy of Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, University of California Los Angeles, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, European University Institute, Franhoufer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Leiden University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Northeastern University, Polish Academy of Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, Pomona College, University of Bologna, Rochester Institute of Technology, José Luiz Egydio Setúbal Foundation, Boston College, Saarland University, University of Colorado Boulder, and University of North Carolina Wilmington.  

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation, a Grantham Research Institute PhD Scholarship, a Cambridge Humanities Research Grant, the Keynes Fund, a CRASSH Research Grant, the Carlsberg Foundation, and an ERC Consolidator Grant.