Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article “Leveraging social science to generate lasting engagement with climate change solutions” in the journal One Earth.

Over the past few decades, researchers have made substantial progress studying people’s climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, policy support, and behaviors. Our own recent research, for example, has helped us gain a better understanding of the roles of socio-economic status, race/ethnicity, social norms, religious and moral values, media exposure, the scientific consensus, and personal stories in shaping people’s responses to climate change. 

Much is unknown, however, about what creates enduring engagement with climate change solutions. In our new article, we review key insights from the literature on what leads to enduring change and highlight open questions and promising areas of research we think are vitally important to improving our understanding of enduring change.

Specifically, we suggest that lasting engagement is more likely to arise from 1) active thinking about climate change via deep discussion with close members of one’s social network, 2) revised mental models that make it easier to understand, think about, and feel motivated to act on climate change, and 3) reinforcement of pro-climate social norms so they become internalized over time.

Although this article is not a comprehensive review, we assess the current state of knowledge to sketch a research agenda on how to generate changes in climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that last. Our team has already started working on this research, and we look forward to sharing those findings with you in the months ahead.

The full article is available here to those with a subscription to One Earth. If you would like to request a copy, please send an email to climatechange@yale.edu with the subject line: Request Lasting Engagement paper.