Experimentally Elevating Environmental Cognitive Alternatives: Effects on Activist Identification, Willingness to Act, and Opposition to New Fossil Fuel Projects

According to social identity theory, people are more likely to demand and collectivelywork for social change if they can imagine a different set of social relations – “cognitivealternatives to the status quo”. In prior work, access to environmental cognitive alternatives(ECA; i.e., access to ideas about how the relationship between humans and the rest of naturecould be more sustainable) correlated with environmental activist intentions and observedactivist behaviour. In three preregistered experiments (N = 3096), we expand this work tovalidate a manipulation of environmental cognitive alternatives and examine the causal effects ofenvironmental cognitive alternatives on identification with and willingness to engage inenvironmental activism. Participants either imagined and wrote about a sustainable world orwere in a control condition. In Study 1 and 2, the manipulation significantly increased scores onthe Environmental Cognitive Alternatives Scale, and analyses supported the construct validity ofthe manipulation. The ECA manipulation increased identification with environmental activists(Study 1, 2, & 3) and willingness to engage in environmental activism (Study 1 & 3). In Study 3we also tested the effects of the manipulation on opposition to new fossil fuel infrastructure andfound that the ECA manipulation increased opposition. Further, the effect of the ECAmanipulation on willingness to engage in environmental activism and on opposition to fossil fuelexpansion projects was mediated by identification with environmental activists. These findingsprovide evidence that we developed a valid manipulation, and that environmental cognitivealternatives can generate support for pro-environmental social change.