National context shapes climate impact perceptions and their effects on climate policy support and behavior

To accelerate climate change mitigation, lifestyle changes and more ambitious climatepolicies are urgently needed. However, realizing lifestyle changes is challenged bywidespread misperceptions about the climate impact of different mitigation behaviors, makingit difficult even for motivated individuals to identify which actions to prioritize and whichpolicies to support. Little is known about the cross-national variability of such climate impactperceptions and their association with climate-relevant outcomes. We aim to address this gapwith a pre-registered cross-country study (N = 2,742) in China, Germany, and the UnitedStates. Using a novel experimental paradigm, we investigate the extent to which participants’perceptions of the climate impact of behaviors and their accuracy in estimating carbonfootprints is associated with their own climate-related behavior and their support for behavior-targeted climate policies. Across the three countries, participants largely misperceived overallcarbon footprints, and underestimated the climate impact of highly carbon-intensive actions.Despite these behavior-specific misperceptions, impact perceptions of different actions wereindependent of each other, showing no evidence for compensatory judgments. Participants’impact perceptions and carbon footprint accuracy were associated with their owncorresponding behavior across all countries. However, the association between impactperceptions and climate policy support varied by national context with impact perceptionshaving a direct effect in Germany, no effect in China, and a moderated effect by politicalorientation in the United States. Our study highlights the need for cross-national research tofurther uncover contexts that foster accurate behavioral knowledge and correspondingsustainable behavior.