How Hope and Doubt Affect Climate Change Mobilization

By Jennifer R. Marlon, Brittany Bloodhart, Matthew T. Ballew, Justin Rolfe-Redding, Connie Roser-Renouf, Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach. Frontiers in Communication, 2019

174 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The severe threats posed by anthropogenic climate change make hope and a sense of efficacy key ingredients in effective climate communication. Yet little is known about what makes individuals hopeful – or in contrast, doubtful – that humanity can reduce the problem, or how hope relates to activism. This study uses mixed-methods with two national surveys to 1) identify what makes people hopeful or doubtful that humanity will address the problem (Study 1, N = 674), and 2) whether hopeful and doubtful appraisals are related to activism or policy support (Study 2, N = 1,310). In Study 1, responses to open-ended questions reveal a lack of hope among the public. For those with hope, the most common reason relates to social phenomena – seeing others act or believing that collective awareness is rising (“constructive hope”). Hope for some, however, stems from the belief that God or nature will solve the problem without the need for human intervention (which we call “false hope”). The most prevalent doubts are low prioritization, greed, and intergroup conflict (i.e., the need for cooperation at various scales to successfully address the issue). We identified both “constructive” and “fatalistic” doubts. Constructive doubts are concerns that humanity won’t address the problem effectively, while fatalistic doubts are beliefs that we can’t address the problem even if we wanted to because it is in the hands of God or Mother Nature. Study 2, we used these emergent hope and doubt appraisals to develop survey measures. Regression analyses suggest that constructive hope and doubt predict increased policy support and political engagement, whereas false hope and fatalistic doubt predict the opposite. An interaction exists between constructive hope and doubt in predicting political behavioral intentions, which suggests that having hope that humans will reduce climate change, along with recognition that humans are not doing enough may also be constructive and motivate political action. Climate change communicators might consider focusing on constructive hope (e.g., human progress, the rise of clean energy), coupled with elements of constructive doubt (e.g., the reality of the threat, the need for more action), to mobilize action on climate change.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c8fa0861cf0898c5c99a5059a59a8521e019f661

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Citations in the corpus

Positive emotions and climate change (2021, unknown): “A related body of research has explored feelings of hope-fulness as an antecedent of climate change engagement [38,39].”
The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States (2021, methodology): “These items have been used in many surveys and experiments related to collective action on climate change (Ballew, Goldberg, et al., 2019; Feldman et al., 2017; Leiserowitz, Maibach, et al., 2019; Marlon et al., 2019; RoserRenouf et al., 2014).”
Environmental and Health Impacts of Air Pollution: A Review (2020, background): “Climate changes and the effects of global planetary warming seriously affect multiple ecosystems, causing problems such as food safety issues, ice and iceberg melting, animal extinction, and damage to plants (3, 4).”
Climate of hope or doom and gloom? Testing the climate change hope vs. fear communications debate through online videos (2021, background): “Marlon et al. (2019) found that only “constructive hope,” meaning hope based on human intervention, was associated with stronger climate political behavior intentions, as opposed to “false hope” in which an individual believes an issue will improve on its own.”