Can Climate Skeptics Be Convinced? The Effect of Nature Videos on Environmental Concern
Institute of Sociology, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
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Sustainability 2020, 12(7), 2972; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072972
Received: 3 March 2020 / Revised: 31 March 2020 / Accepted: 3 April 2020 / Published: 8 April 2020
(This article belongs to the Section Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development)
Much research has demonstrated that videos can function as primers or nudges that influence attitudes and behaviors. Studies to date suggest that this includes influence over individual pro-environmental attitudes. However, the existing evidence all stems from samples comprised of university students. In this paper, we describe the results of a randomized online experiment in a sample of 468 climate skeptics. We presented 3-min nature documentary videos that highlighted either the beauty of nature, the endangerment of nature by humans, or a mixture of both. The results suggest that the mixed stimulus video, which shows first the beauty of nature and then its endangerment by humans does indeed increase environmental concern by almost half a standard deviation. However, none of the video treatments increased donations to pro-environmental organizations. Still, the results suggest that nudging by video also works in samples of climate skeptics, which demonstrates the external validity of former findings.
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Keywords:
environmental skepticism; environmental concern; environmental video primers; environmental education
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MDPI and ACS Style
Franzen, A.; Mader, S. Can Climate Skeptics Be Convinced? The Effect of Nature Videos on Environmental Concern. Sustainability 2020, 12, 2972. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072972
AMA Style
Franzen A, Mader S. Can Climate Skeptics Be Convinced? The Effect of Nature Videos on Environmental Concern. Sustainability. 2020; 12(7):2972. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072972
Chicago/Turabian StyleFranzen, Axel, and Sebastian Mader. 2020. "Can Climate Skeptics Be Convinced? The Effect of Nature Videos on Environmental Concern" Sustainability 12, no. 7: 2972. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072972
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