A 27-country test of communicating the scientific consensus on climate change

Communicating the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is real increases climate change beliefs, worry and support for public action in the United States. This preregistered experiment tested two scientific consensus messages across online convenience samples from 27 countries (n = 10,527). The classic message substantially reduced misperceptions and slightly increased climate change beliefs and worry, but not support for public action. The updated message, emphasizing climate change as a crisis, was equally effective but offered no added value. Both messages were more effective for audiences with lower message familiarity and higher misperceptions. Scientific consensus messaging is an effective, non-polarizing tool for changing misperceptions, beliefs, and worry.

Bojana Većkalov, Sandra J. Geiger, František Bartoš, Mathew P. White, Bastiaan T. Rutjens, Frenk van Harreveld, Federica Stabilum, Berkan Akın, Alaa Aldoh, Jinhao Bai, Frida Berglund, Aleša Bratina Zimic, Margaret Broyles, Andrea Catania, Airu Chen, Magdalena Chorzępa, Eman Farahat, Jakob Götz, Bat Hoter-Ishay, Gesine Jordan, Siri Joustra, Jonas Klingebiel, Živa Krajnc, Antonia Krug, Thomas Lind Andersen, Johanna Löloff, Divya Natarajan, Sasha Newman-Oktan, Elena Niehoff, Celeste Paerels, Rachel Papirmeister, Steven Peregrina, Felicia Pohl, Amanda Remsö, Abigail Roh, Binahayati Rusyidi, Justus Schmidt, Mariam Shavgulidze, Valentina Vellinho Nardin, Ruixiang Wang, Kelly Warner, Miranda Wattier, Chloe Y. Wong, Mariem Younssi, Kai Ruggeri, Sander van der Linden