Communicating the Economic Impact of Science Funding Cuts Changes Attitudes and Motivates Action

In the United States, cuts to federal science funding have widespread immediate and future negative consequences for research, healthcare, and the economy. Scalable behavioral interventions that communicate the impact of science funding cuts could change policy support and bridge partisan divides. We conducted two preregistered psychological experiments (N=5,342), recruiting politically-representative samples of U.S. adults. We tested novel text, quiz, and map-based interventions that illustrated economic losses associated with National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding cuts. Across the political spectrum, the interventions robustly and reliably decreased approval of funding cuts, and increased perceived knowledge and negative local impact. Interactive interventions featuring quizzes and maps increased action intentions (e.g., contacting congressional representatives). To scale these interventions, we created a public website (https://scienceimpacts.org/); a third study analyzing naturalistic user data (N=24,028) revealed converging evidence of effectiveness. Overall, scalable interventions that interactively communicated economic impact changed attitudes and motivated action to support science funding.