FROM PERCEIVING THE RISK OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO PRO - ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR - Climate change psychology study summary

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Aditya

Investigation across two studies tests how climate-change knowledge, social norms, value orientations, and emotional affect predict climate-change risk perception among Transylvanian students, and how risk perception, psychological adaptation, mitigation beliefs, and behavioral intention relate to pro-environmental behavior (PEB). The intervention delivered brief writing synopses for five days via email. Results indicate biosphere values and demographics significantly predict risk perception, and PEB rose in the research group with effects persisting beyond one month.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Key constructs

Risk perception

Holistic affect and information processing

Value orientations

Social norms

Pro-environmental behavior

Behavioral intention

FROM PERCEIVING THE RISK OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO PRO ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR Gertrúd M. KERESZTES, Ibolya KOTTA Abstract: In the first study we examined whether knowledge, social norms, value orientations and emotional affect about climate change (climate change) predict climate change risk perception among Transylvanian students. In the second study we examined whether climate change risk perception, psychological adaptation, mitigation beliefs and behavioral intention predict, both directly and indirectly, pro-environmental behavior (PEB) . We also examined whether knowledge, deep engagement and affective involvement influence PEB. In the first study N = 84 (age M = 19.43, SD = 1.03), while in the second study N = 72 (M = 19.79, SD = 1.47), and N= 31 (M= 19.61, SD = 1.17) individuals participated. The participants filled the scales online. Internal consistency of the scales was found to be good. During the intervention the research group received brief synopses on climate change in writing, through e-mail, for five days. The results show that biosphere values and demographics significantly predict climate change risk perception. The intervention significantly increased PEB in the research group and this effect persisted for over a month. Keywords: climate change, pro-environmental behavior, risk perception, deep engagement 1. Introduction Climate change has been the subject of research in psychology in the past decades (Reser et al., 2012; Swim et al., 2009; van der Linden, 2015) . The ways that pro-environmental behavior can be encouraged has been the subject of many previous researches. Most of them consider the importance of information about climate change in both risk perception and pro-environmental behavior (Clayton et al., 2015; Masud et al., 2016; Truelove & Parks, 2012) . Its effects have a large range in both space and time that cannot be perceived directly (Weber, 2010). Due to this it is very different from risks perceived by our ancestors (Gifford, 2011; van der Linden, 2015) and people usually see climate change as a distant event that will happen to others ata different time and location (Spence et al., 2012) . On the other hand, those that do perceive climate change as a risk can get caught up in all the negative sides of it. When knowledge about climate change is mainly negative, people can go into excessive worrying and despair, and therefore they will concentrate their energy on solving the emotional pressure that arises. This can often lead to avoiding the topic or even denying the existence of climate change (Stevenson, 2015) . With so many barriers the question remains: how can we make people be conscious and act on climate change? 1.1. Key constructs Risk perception is a process through which we notice and understand signals coming from different sources and then, based on these, we judge the present and future probability and severeness of events (Bradley et al., 2020) . Van der Linden (2015) defines two dimensions of climate change risk perception: global (which affects humanity as a whole, on a societal level) and personal (which endangers the individual itself, during its lifetime) . In order to unravel the constructs that affect climate change risk perception, van der Linden (2015) created a comprehensive model. This comprises cognitive, socio-cultural and experiential factors as sources of risk perception. In the present context, holistic affect means mild emotions, when judging an external stimuli, that can be categorized either as positive (like) or as negative (dislike) (Slovic et al., 2007) . It can elicit an automatic response which can later help us by giving a direction to information processing and judgement making (Zajonc, 1980) . Despite the fact that the effects of climate change can hardly be experienced directly, previous research has shown that many people notice the changes in their local climate (Swim et al., 2009) and that warmer days influence people’s p

FAQs

Which variables significantly predict climate-change risk perception and what is the key outcome?

Biosphere values and demographics significantly predict climate-change risk perception, and the intervention significantly increased PEB with effects persisting for over a month.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Aditya