New grant: Walking as Inquiry

I received a 2026 Walking as Inquiry Research Grant from Indiana University. The competitive grant program supports faculty projects that investigate walking as a research methodology and object of study, with a focus on place, embodiment, mobility, and the production of new humanities scholarship.

My project explores how walking through the cities my father once called home shapes my understanding of grief, memory, beauty, and joy.

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📢 New paper: Expert Perceptions of the Viability and Importance of Solar Geoengineering and Carbon Dioxide Removal in Addressing Climate Change: A Snapshot from India and the United States

Given the enormous span of potential strategies to address climate change, it is difficult to build consensus on what to prioritize. In 2021, we conducted 63 semi-structured interviews with climate change experts in the U.S. (N = 33) and India (N = 30). Experts indicated how they would address climate change through mitigation, adaptation, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and solar geoengineering (SG). Our experts studied climate change from a variety of disciplines and were not necessarily subject matter experts in CDR or SG. Most experts stated that while more research is needed on CDR and SG, there is low appeal to deploying them in responding to climate change. Across our entire sample, we find that 44% of experts supported deploying CDR compared to 3% for SG. We also find that 17% of experts opposed the deployment of CDR, while twice as many (35%) opposed deploying SG. While there is far more support for traditional measures like mitigation and adaptation, most experts were hesitant to support technologies like CDR and SG to limit warming to 1.5 ◦C or 2 ◦C to prevent dangerous climate impacts, with statements tending toward a precautionary principle. Deep interdisciplinary engagement by climate change experts on CDR and SG is essential to understanding these technologies’ potential roles in addressing climate change and the perceptions of risk of these technologies held by experts who work on other areas of the climate problem. We highlight the potential for follow-up studies on broader expert opinions of CDR and SG, as well as evaluating whether perceptions and opinions are lagging behind fast-changing developments in the field.

PDF found here.

Congrats to Kasie Chappell on her fellowships

Kasie Chappell, who is working on her masters thesis, was just awarded the Fred Fisher MSES Fellowship and the O'Neill Environmental Science Fellowship for her work.

Her work focuses on integrated systems modeling of sustainable fashion consumption. She will be exam how structural, informational, and cognitive factors interact to shape behavior and environmental outcomes using dynamical systems and meta-analysis.

Way to go, Kasie!

Ty Trapp and Katie Goodman presents at Sustainability Symposium at IUB

Ty will be presenting a poster of our work on electric vehicles and heat pumps at the inaugural IUB Undergraduate Symposium for Creative Activity and Research.

The event will take place on Thursday, April 23, at the IMU. He will be presenting his poster from 2:00-4:00 pm. See you there. Undergraduate Symposium

Katie will be presenting a poster of our ongoing work on narratives for large scale wind and large scale solar at the Sustainability Symposium, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm at Franklin Hall.

✨ Congratulations, Ty and Katie ! ✨

Connecting on climate: Perceived similarity to a climate victim increases the likelihood of donation

🌟 Warm congrats to Dr. Deidra Miniard on publishing another paper from her dissertation work. 🌟

Abstract: Social distance refers to the perceived psychological distance between the self and another person on dimensions such as race and class, and influences climate change attitudes and behavior. In two online experiments, we investigated the effect of manipulating social distance on donation to a climate organization, how soon participants want action on climate change, and psychological distance of climate change. Study 1 (N = 1150) asked participants to read a vignette which manipulated the race and income class of a climate victim, and Study 2 (N = 1248) changed only the race of the climate victim. Participants who reported feeling similar to the hypothetical climate victim were more likely to donate to a climate organization (Study 2; 46.6% who perceive themselves to be similar versus 34.0% who perceive themselves to be different). We also find that Republican participants who perceive the climate victim as similar want action sooner than Republican participants who view the victim as different. Finally, participants who perceive the victim as similar to themselves also view climate change as less psychologically distant. However, since perceived similarity was not randomly assigned, these relationships should not be interpreted as causal. Our findings suggest that feelings of similarity to climate victims may relate to climate attitudes and behaviors, though this connection requires further investigation.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.102996

Do Facts Matter? Consumer Misperceptions about Adopting Electrification Technologies

Paper: Climatic Change

Press release: O’Neill

Authors: Shahzeen Z. Attari, Benjamin A. Motz, Apramay Mishra, Grace K. Brautigam, Ty Trapp, and John D. Graham

Abstract: Consumer adoption of electrification technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps (HPs) is critical for mitigating climate change. While previous research has focused on demographic factors, incentives, and technology attributes, we do not yet understand how consumers' ability to discern fact from fiction about these technologies relates to their adoption interest. In a preregistered study, we conducted an online national U.S. survey (n = 861) to investigate relationships between adoption interests and participants’ ability to discern true and false narrative statements about EVs and HPs. Our results show distinct consumer segments and reasons for technology adoption. We also find that adoption interest is not significantly associated with participants’ ability to discriminate accurate information about the technologies. Surprisingly, technology owners are less accurate than non-owners, being more likely to endorse false positive narrative statements and less likely to endorse correct negative narrative statements, regardless of technology. The disconnect between adoption and accuracy suggests that efforts to promote these technologies should focus beyond information provision to also address consumers’ biases. Politically liberal participants were biased toward positive statements, while politically conservative participants were biased toward negative statements about these technologies, again indicating confirmation bias. This bias is far stronger for EVs than HPs, given that HPs are broadly less familiar and less politically polarizing. Our work shows how participants systematically succumb to confirmation bias when navigating information which can dramatically shape adoption interest.

🙏🏽 Our work is supported by the Paul H. O’Neill professorship awarded to S.Z.A. at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Cox Research Scholarship program at Indiana University Bloomington for funding T.T. We also thank Diksha Singh and Lucas Giese for research assistance. The authors would like to thank each of our expert, novice, and pretesting participants for completing our survey.

New internal grant award!

We just received an internal grant: Solving Complex Problems Using a Collaborative Decision-Support Tool for $50k. Huge congratulations to lead PI Landon Yoder, co-PI Ben Kravitz & Therese Dorau. ⭐

Briefly, we plan to build a user-center and collaboratively developed, online decision-support tool that would make the low carbon energy decision environment easier for individuals interested in understanding how their actions contribute to collective outcomes. We will use heat pumps as a case study for the complexity of pro-environmental behaviors.

New paper out: Climate change as a risk multiplier

A huge congratulations to Dr. Deidra Miniard, now Research Associate with the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Miniard, D., Attari, S.Z. Connecting climate change to important issues increases perception of climate change as a risk multiplier. Climatic Change 178, 197 (2025). https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1007/s10584-025-04034-y

Here is the paper.

Abstract: Climate change exacerbates many existing challenges such as economic issues and public health, yet the public struggles to connect climate change to other issues they care about. Research on climate change communication suggests that framing messages to align with people's existing priorities and concerns can increase engagement, though evidence on the effectiveness of different frames remains mixed. Our study tested whether connecting climate change to salient issues influences participant perceptions of climate change as a risk multiplier, their systems thinking, their policy support, and their ability to connect climate change to other issues. An online experiment (N = 2,165) randomly assigned participants to one of five conditions: (1) immigration, (2) inflation, (3) racial justice, (4) messaging matching the participants’ most important issue out of the three, and (5) a no-information control. Those exposed to vignettes were more likely to agree that climate change will exacerbate existing issues, but this did not improve systems thinking or increase policy support, except for a climate-refugee resettlement policy in the immigration condition.

New paper out: Combining personal and political action most popular climate solution narrative

A wide variety of existing narratives describe how we might address climate change. Which of these approaches is popular among the American public? Do the general public and their elected officials accurately perceive which climate solutions are popular? We assess personal endorsement and perceptions of public support in national representative samples of the U.S. public (N = 1500) and local-level U.S. policymakers (N = 500). Proactive narratives, like ones advocating for both personal behavior and policy action, are widely endorsed, but both the public and policymakers greatly underestimate their popularity (a case of pluralistic ignorance), especially for narratives calling for systemic change. Greater endorsement of these narratives corresponded to greater willingness to take personal and political actions and support climate policy. We also find experimental exposure to some climate narratives (N = 2060) may increase participants’ behavioral intentions and policy support, suggesting which narratives are spread in popular media is important to help address climate change.

Alternate dimension mill

The latest project from MDWST Fable, Alternate Dimension Mill will explore more positive ways to imagine our collective future via talks and performances from other dimensions.

Join us for a playful and speculative excursion into alternate dimensions organized around five sets of guests reflecting on topics essential to our lives in this dimension: climate (IU scholar Shahzeen Attari), war (engineer Sami Koutsares), art (artist Jon Vickers, poet Terry Sloan, and musician Jason Fickel), music (saxophonist and bandleader Peyton Womock), and the spirit of the city (local politics expert Steve Volan), what makes our town our town.

These guests will appear on April 19, 2025 at the Monroe County Public Library Auditorium at 3:30 PM. Admission is free, though audience members should be aware that a short questionnaire may be required for entry. Portal visualizations will be provided by NYC video artist Daniel McKleinfeld. 

“[T]he main goal of the Alternate Dimension Mill is to suggest that nothing has to be the way it is,” notes Rice. “We could have a shared future we love, no matter what dimension we find ourselves in. Dystopia isn’t the only option,” adds Newyear.