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.