Tipping points ahead? How laypeople respond to linear versus nonlinear climate change predictions.

ABSTRACT: We investigate whether communication strategies that portray climate change as a nonlinear phenomenon provoke increases in laypeople's climate change risk perceptions. In a high-powered, preregistered online experiment, participants were exposed to linear or nonlinear predictions of future temperature increases that would be expected if global greenhouse gas emissions were not reduced. We hypothesized that the type of climate change portrayal would impact perceptions of qualitative risk characteristics (catastrophic potential, controllability of consequences) which would, in turn, affect laypeople's holistic risk perceptions. The results of the study indicate that the type of climate change portrayal did not affect perceptions of risk or other social-cognitive variables such as efficacy be

SUBMITTER: Formanski FJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9676726 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature