Emotions Without Action: Experimental Tests of the Affective Pathway to Pro-Environmental Intentions

Empirical evidence suggests that anxious affective responses to climate change predict pro-environmental attitudes, intentions and behavior. However, that evidence is mostly correlational. We present experiments designed to test the mediational hypoth-esis that exposure to climate change information elicits negative affective responses that then increase pro-environmental intentions. In Study series 1 (8 studies, total n = 871), we used a measurement-of-mediation design. We provided participants with in-formation about the devastating effects of climate change or other, non-threatening information. We investigated whether the resulting negative affect predicted partici-pants’ subsequent pro-environmental intentions. Exposure to climate change infor-mation did not significantly raise pro-environmental intentions. Positive and negative affective responses did not significantly mediate the effect. In Study 2 (n = 135), we employed a manipulation-of-mediator design, which is a more stringent test of media-tion. We asked people to either deepen or suppress their feelings while they were ex-posed to climate change information or climate change-unrelated information. Deep-ening one’s feelings increased negative affect and reduced positive affect, but did not significantly raise pro-environmental intentions. Together, these results suggest that climate change information reliably produces affective responses, but these do not translate into pro-environmental intentions.