The role of environmental mental imagery in impact beliefs about climate change mitigation and pro-environmental intentions

Abstract

People are aware that climate change is happening, yet many do not act on this information. Increasing the awareness that some pro-environmental behaviors have a larger impact than others has the potential to be a piece of the puzzle needed to increase climate action. The current study aims to create an intervention, by combining feedback about the efficacy of pro-environmental behaviors and a novel mental imagery task, intended to help people update their impact beliefs and increase their intention to engage in pro-environmental behavior. The participants (N = 1012) were recruited online and randomized to one of three conditions: 1) Environmentally themed mental imagery in combination with efficacy feedback; 2) Efficacy feedback only; 3) Control. As predicted, we found that efficacy feedback affected the intention to act pro-environmentally, however, the intention to act increased more when the feedback was combined with a mental imagery task. In addition, we found that combining the two interventions increased the perceived impact of pro-environmental behaviors to a higher degree than efficacy feedback alone. Mediation analyses indicated that the change of impact beliefs mediated the change in pro-environmental intention in the combination condition, but not in the other conditions. These results suggest the potential aggregated effect of using mental imagery with efficacy feedback in behavioral interventions aimed at mitigating climate change.