Global Environmental Psychology

How to Deal With Negative Climate Emotions? An Experimental Study on Emotion Regulation in the Context of the Climate Crisis Among Activists and Non-Activists

Severin Hennemann — 2026-04-30

Emotion regulation (ER) is essential for psychological resilience amid climate change. This preregistered study evaluated the effectiveness of two ER strategies — reappraisal and expressive suppression — in reducing negative emotional responses to climate-related imagery in climate activists and non-activists. In line with previous research on ER in non-environmental contexts, we expected reappraisal to be a more effective ER strategy than suppression. A sample of 274 individuals (75 activists and 199 non-activists) participated in an online experiment. In 24 trials, participants were presented with images from the Affective Climate Images Database and instructed to either apply reappraisal, suppression, or passively observe the image (control trials). As indicators of ER effectiveness, we assessed and compared pre- and post-regulation ratings of affective valence and arousal. Additionally, participants indicated the effort of implementing the ER strategies. As hypothesized, reappraisal emerged as the most effective strategy, while suppression was even less effective than merely viewing the images in the control trials. Reappraisal and suppression effectiveness did not differ between activists and non-activists, but activists found reappraisal more effortful than non-activists. Neither reappraisal nor suppression effectiveness was significantly associated with self-reported pro-environmental behavior. Our findings indicate a high-effectiveness-high-effort trade-off for reappraisal and underline the ineffectiveness of suppression when confronted with climate change's consequences.

Communicating the Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Weather in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States

Laura Thomas-Walters — 2026-04-30

As climate change increasingly affects the likelihood and severity of extreme weather events such as flooding and heat waves around the world, it is more important than ever to encourage both mitigation and adaptation. As an important step, people need to understand the links between climate change and extreme weather. We conducted a preregistered online randomized experiment with over 10,000 participants across India, the UK, and the USA, three countries that are large annual emitters but have different patterns of extreme weather. We tested the impact of different numerical frames (percentage versus times) and types of extreme weather (heat waves versus flooding) on beliefs that climate change made extreme weather in 2023 more likely. All four message treatments had a significant effect, increasing the percentage of participants who believed climate change made extreme weather more likely by 4.5 to 6.1 percentage points. However, there was no main effect of specific event type or numerical framing. We found message treatments also increased worry about climate change in general, although impact on policy support or information-seeking behavior was limited. The findings of this study contribute to the scarce literature on which messages are effective at communicating extreme weather event attribution.

What Motivates Individuals or Groups to Engage in Commons Initiatives? A Scoping Review

Vincent Aggrey — 2026-04-30

Who joins commons initiatives, and why? This paper presents a scoping review of 53 theoretical and empirical studies from 2004 to 2023, focusing on the sociodemographics of commoners and their individual and group motivations for joining. The review reveals that a wide range of people participate in commons initiatives for a variety of complex reasons. Their decision to join may be influenced by normative motives, such as biospheric values and feelings of ethical responsibility. They may be motivated by self-interest, such as positive outcome expectations, or by high self-efficacy beliefs and easy access to the initiative. In terms of group motivations for joining commons, we highlight social identity, collective efficacy beliefs, mutual support and reciprocity, collaborative decision-making, and trust. Applying a broad theoretical and geographical scope in our review enhanced our understanding of people who participate in commons initiatives in the Global North and South.

Impact of a Default Nudge Intervention on Plant-Based Milk Consumption in a UK University Café

Katie Major-Smith — 2025-12-23

Encouraging plant-based food consumption among western consumers is vital for reducing the environmental impacts of animal agriculture. This study examined whether a default nudge intervention increased plant-based milk consumption in a UK university café using an ABAB experimental design. During the intervention phases, the default milk option was changed from dairy to oat milk. In the first intervention phase, customers were approximately three times more likely to consume plant-based milk when oat milk was the default option (from 16.6% to 51.9%). However, this effect was smaller in the second intervention phase compared to the first (from 51.9% to 46.0%), questioning the intervention’s long-term impact. Comparable data in the university’s second café (where no intervention occurred) found no differences in plant-based milk intake during the study period, suggesting that changes in plant-based milk consumption were due to the default nudge. Based on this intervention, the milk-based carbon footprint per drink reduced by an estimated 25%–34%. These findings suggest that, in a UK university café context, default nudges can encourage plant-based milk consumption and reduce dairy intake. This provides implications for adopting sustainable default nudges in the university and wider food sector to help reduce the environmental impacts of animal agriculture.

The Relation Between Character Strengths and Sustainable Consumption Behavior

Petra Jansen — 2025-12-23

The study aimed to investigate the relationship between character strengths and sustainable consumption. Moreover, the study examined differences in character strengths between individuals who follow vegan/vegetarian diets and those who are omnivores. Participants were 203 adults between 18 and 68 years. Significant correlations were found between sustainable consumption of food and the character strengths of kindness, forgiveness, curiosity, love of learning, prudence, zest, and judgment, and between sustainable consumption of clothes and the character strengths of hope, kindness, love, curiosity, love of learning, gratitude, and zest. Sustainable food consumption was predicted by spirituality, curiosity, prudence, and diet preference, and sustainable consumption of clothes was predicted by kindness, curiosity, and diet preference. To conclude, the study has revealed some relations between character strengths and sustainable consumption, hinting that inner transformational qualities could be essential to behaving sustainably. However, the relations are weak. This study can only be seen as a first step towards a deeper analysis of internal transformative qualities for sustainable behavior. In general, well-powered intervention studies with fostering values or connectedness must be conducted to investigate if internal transformative qualities are relevant for a change toward sustainable behavior.

Optimal Delivery of Social Norms Feedback to Reduce Household Water Consumption

Ukasha Ramli — 2025-12-12

Providing households with consumption feedback can effectively reduce water and energy use. However, the efficacy may depend on the medium and frequency of the messages. In this longitudinal study spanning over two years, we report two experiments on household water use read via meter in the United Kingdom: one manipulating the frequency of feedback (N = 13,047), and one comparing the medium (email vs. paper) of the feedback messages (N = 18,896). Overall, the feedback interventions reduced water consumption by around 2%. There were no differences in delivering the treatment monthly vs. 3-monthly, and paper messages were effective, but emails were not. Almost all households reduced their consumption, although the effect was variable. These results inform psychological interventions and cost-effective messaging for water districts and perhaps other types of utilities.

Design for Behaviour Change — The Influence of Packaging Design on Recycling

Josefine L. Geiger — 2025-09-09

Initial evidence indicates that design can drive socially desirable behaviour change, but little is known about why and under what conditions the effects of design are most likely. We tested whether packaging designs aimed at making people focus on the environment promoted recycling. In Study 1, 380 Dutch citizens viewed either a biscuit package or a cup with or without an environmental design and reported how they would dispose of the item. In Study 2, 104 Dutch university students received a hot beverage in a recyclable cup with an environmental or non-environmental design and we observed whether they disposed of the cup in a recycling bin. While there was no effect of design on the intention to recycle the biscuit package, participants reported that they were more likely to recycle the cup with the environmental design (Study 1), and we observed that they did, in fact, recycle the cup with the environmental design more often than the non-environmental cup (Study 2). We also found a significant interaction effect for the cup conditions: Intention to recycle, and actual recycling, of the environmental cup increased with increasingly strong biospheric values. We discuss implications of our findings.

Pedestrians’ Alertness and Perceived Environmental Safety Under Non-Uniform Urban Lighting

Richard Jedon — 2025-09-09

The influence of urban lighting on the visual tasks of pedestrians is well known and, in line with this, numerous studies have explored the relationship between urban lighting and pedestrians’ feelings of safety. This earlier research has traditionally focused on minimal required illuminance for various visual performance tasks (e.g., obstacle detection and face recognition). However, this focus may have been too narrow, as other light-moderated factors, such as pedestrians’ general attentiveness to the environment, may also be important for safety. Despite this, psychological concepts related to the individuals’ attention, such as alertness, arousal and anxiety, have only rarely been considered in street lighting research to date. The current study takes a first step in this direction, by testing the sensitivity and direction of response of relevant metrics in a pilot study. We decided for a conceptual replication of a field experiment from 1916 and managed to partly replicate the findings (n = 29). Reaction speed (i.e., alertness) was fastest under lighting with lowest uniformity whereas perceived environmental safety was highest under uniform lighting. Concepts of energetic and tense arousal showed clear, opposite relationships with perceived environmental safety. Limitations of the present study, as well as implications for future research in this domain are discussed.

Measuring Belief in Climate Change With a Single Item

Sebastian Berger — 2025-07-07

Brief, but psychometrically valid assessments of psychological constructs are increasingly needed to be included in larger psychological and other social scientific studies, such as Many Labs projects or representative surveys. Here, we provide a novel one-item measure of individual differences in belief in climate change. Based on two studies (N = 913, N = 288) recruited from various global regions, we establish convergent, predictive, and discriminant validity. More specifically, we find that the single-item measure correlates with other constructs measuring belief in climate change and with relevant downstream constructs, among them intentions to engage in pro-environmental behavior, actual consequential behavior, and self-reported everyday behaviors. We therefore conclude that the single item is a suitable instrument to measure belief in climate change when multiple-item assessments are either too costly or otherwise unfeasible.

Social and Ecological Dominance Orientations, Climate Change Denial, and Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Gözde Kıral Uçar — 2025-07-07

This study was aimed at investigating the associations between social dominance orientation (SDO), ecological dominance orientation (EDO), climate change denial and past pro-environmental behaviour. A total of 348 individuals, aged between 18 and 61 years (M = 22.27; SD = 4.80), participated in this study. The results showed that SDO predicted all forms of climate change denial and past pro-environmental behaviour, although EDO only predicted denial of guilt. Additionally, the rationalisation of own involvement dimension of climate change denial, but no other dimensions of it, predicted past pro-environmental behaviour. Moreover, gender was a predictor of five dimensions of climate change denial and past pro-environmental behaviour.