Impact of anger, compassion and hope on climate action taking

Climate change is a serious threat to both people and ecosystems around the globe. This makes it increasingly important to understand what drives pro-environmental behavior (PEB). Emotions are increasingly recognized as key drivers of PEB, and cognitive appraisals behind them seem to shape the behavioural outcomes. We conducted a preregistered study on the influence of distinct emotions—anger, compassion, and hope—on PEB. Participants (N=1029 in Poland, N=1010 in Norway) read emotional stories designed to elicit a specific set of appraisals related to climate change, or neutral stories. Subsequently, they completed two tasks designed to measure different types of PEB: a time and effort task (Work for Environmental Protection Task; WEPT) and a monetary donation task. We hypothesised that reading emotional (as compared to neutral) stories will drive PEB and that specific appraisal patterns related to distinct emotions will promote different behavioural intentions. We also predicted that demographic variables and other personal factors would moderate the relationship between emotions and PEB. Contrary to our expectations, collected data provide no evidence for the hypothesised effects, consistently across both samples. We discuss potential areas for further research including the use of validated naturalistic and immersive stimuli, prolonged exposure to interventions, momentary assessment of behaviours, and matching behavioural tasks to emotional manipulation.