Future-oriented Action Interventions Promote Personal and Civic Climate Action

A majority of people are concerned about climate change but under-engaged in climate action, especially civic or collective action. We integrated insights from multiple traditions of future-oriented psychological interventions focused on imagination and action planning, and we tested the resulting psychological intervention through three experimental conditions that targeted either a personal (e.g., driving less) or civic climate action (e.g., contacting elected officials about climate change), or neither. Participants then reported their intention to engage in personal and civic pro-environmental behaviors. Preregistered analyses (on N = 1,586 participants) showed that both personal and civic action interventions increased the targeted pro-environmental behavior. Furthermore, these effects extended to other other (non-targeted) pro-environmental behaviors, though only to the same category of action (personal vs. civic). In a second preregistered study, we replicated the intention effects of the civic action intervention. This study extends prior theory about the psychology of behavior change and provides practical insights to bridge the gap between climate concern and engagement in coordinated climate initiatives.