Increasing people's acceptance of anthropogenic climate change with scientific facts: Is mechanistic information more effective for environmentalists?

• Published in: Journal of environmental psychology Vol. 73; p. 101549
• Main Authors: Taube, Oliver, Ranney, Michael Andrew, Henn, Laura, Kaiser, Florian G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2021
• Subjects: Climate change communication; Environmental attitudes; Information dissemination; Knowledge management; Social acceptance; Environmental attitudes; Knowledge management; Climate change communication; Information dissemination; Social acceptance
• ISSN: 0272-4944; 1522-9610
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101549

Knowledge-deficit models highlight that providing novel information increases knowledge and acceptance of empirical facts. Motivated cognition models, however, highlight that people often discount new attitude-conflicting facts. Thereby, according to motivated cognition models, people's levels of global warming knowledge and anthropogenic climate change acceptance markedly reflect their preexisting environmental attitude. In four studies (N = 845), we tested the efficacy of new information to foster knowledge and alter acceptance while simultaneously controlling for environmental attitude. Despite corroborating the association of knowledge and acceptance (Study 1), providing information about the physical-chemical mechanism behind global warming did not always promote the acceptance of anthropogenic climate change (Study 2 vs. Studies 3 and 4). Moreover, acceptance increases induced with mechanistic information did not exceed acceptance gains induced with information about global warming's consequences (Study 3). By contrast, our findings corroborate environmental attitude's relevance for two central remnants of learning: knowledge (Studies 1, 3, and 4) and behavior (e.g., information seeking: Study 4). •Mechanistic knowledge correlated with acceptance of anthropogenic climate change.•Knowledge increases obtained with information were independent of baseline attitude.•Mechanistic information did not always increase acceptance.•Acceptance was also increased by information about global warming's consequences.•Environmental attitude predicted knowledge, acceptance and information seeking.