UC Berkeley

Although 70% of Americans accept the reality of climate change (Leiserowitz et al., 2021), a lack of concerted societal action has not yet moved the issue to the top tier of the political agenda. This apparent “value-action gap” has been ascribed to, among other factors, maladaptive emotions in response to climate change’s threat that inhibit action–for instance, apathy that has likely been stoked by some climate denialists’ claims that although climate change is real, the problem is too big to do anything about. Hope, defined by Snyder (2002) as a combination of agency and pathways thinking, has been identified as a particularly important and effective way to overcome unhelpful emotions regarding climate change—and can increase people’s sense of efficacy with respect to climate change, hence prompting subsequent action. Although the theoretical value of hope regarding climate change has been identified, there is a dearth of climate-change specific interventions that have been empirically demonstrated to increase hope about the climate.

This dissertation assesses the effectiveness of four different experimental interventions designed to increase Americans’ hope about our ability to successfully tackle climate change. All interventions/experiments are short, self-contained, and solution focused. Each contains factually correct information about (Experiment 1) pro-environmental actions individuals can take themselves, (Experiment 2) the effectiveness and uptake of large-scale climate change solutions, (Experiment 3) a narrative depicting the successful implementation of a climate change solution despite challenges, and (Experiment 4) an activity in which pairs of students work together to select eight out of 15 solutions that have been identified by scientists as feasible ways by which society can overcome the climate crisis. Interventions have been designed to enhance participants’ sense of agency (e.g., through underdog narratives and role-play while negotiating among different climate change solutions—in Interventions 3 and 4, respectively) and pathways thinking (through ordering a list of pro-environmental behaviors and predicting and then observing the effectiveness of different societal-scale climate change solutions—in Interventions 1 and 2, respectively).

The effectiveness of the interventions was primarily assessed via quantitative pre-to-post-test changes in hope, using pre- and post-intervention survey data. In addition to quantitative analysis for all experiments, CRQA analysis of facial expressions and qualitative analysis of discussions were additionally evaluated for Intervention 4, which was the only intervention that required inter-participant collaboration. Also assessed were pre-to-post intervention changes in constructs such as global warming acceptance/concern, nationalism, moral elevation, pro-social indicators, and (for Experiment 4) partner affiliation (to better characterize the relationship between hope and these other, related, variables). Analyses found that all four interventions were successful at increasing hope about our ability to tackle climate change to a statistically significant extent. Interventions 2 and 4 (focused on societal scale solutions) were additionally shown to increase global warming acceptance. Interventions 2 and 3 increased nationalism (given their focus on Americans and their companies demonstrating agency re climate). Intervention 3 also increased moral elevation and pro-social behavioral intent. Intervention 4 also increased group connection and cohesion. In all four experiments, strong correlations between hope about climate change and global warming acceptance were found, indicating the interrelated nature of these two crucial constructs.

Results reveal insights into the nature of what it means to be hopeful about a societal issue such as climate change and such hope’s close relationships with various related constructs, including its relationship with climate change acceptance. Ultimately, these results show that hope about our ability to successfully tackle climate change can efficiently be increased—using no deception—over short timescales. As such, the primary contribution of this dissertation is the creation of a set of factually accurate materials that can be quickly used by activists, educators, scientists, and policy makers who seek to communicate their informative results to the public in a way that inspires hope and/or action with respect to climate change.