| 英文摘要: | Personal and political action on climate change is traditionally thought to be motivated by people accepting its reality and importance. However, convincing the public that climate change is real faces powerful ideological obstacles1, 2, 3, 4, and climate change is slipping in public importance in many countries5, 6. Here we investigate a different approach, identifying whether potential co-benefits of addressing climate change7 could motivate pro-environmental behaviour around the world for both those convinced and unconvinced that climate change is real. We describe an integrated framework for assessing beliefs about co-benefits8, distinguishing social conditions (for example, economic development, reduced pollution or disease) and community character (for example, benevolence, competence). Data from all inhabited continents (24 countries; 6,196 participants) showed that two co-benefit types, Development (economic and scientific advancement) and Benevolence (a more moral and caring community), motivated public, private and financial actions to address climate change to a similar degree as believing climate change is important. Critically, relationships were similar for both convinced and unconvinced participants, showing that co-benefits can motivate action across ideological divides. These relationships were also independent of perceived climate change importance, and could not be explained by political ideology, age, or gender. Communicating co-benefits could motivate action on climate change where traditional approaches have stalled. Those trying to motivate widespread action on climate change face two hurdles. The first is to convince enough people that climate change is real and important. The second is to move people from accepting its reality and importance to acting, both in pressuring their governments and in their personal lives. A single strategy has typically been used to overcome both hurdles: present the science and consequences of climate change in more compelling ways9. This intuitive strategy was initially successful, but in many places progress has stalled or even reversed. Communicating climate science is now failing to persuade those who remain unconvinced climate change is real (‘unconvinced’, or climate sceptics)10, and the public priority of climate change is declining in many countries5, 6. These issues are strongly linked to political ideology1, 2, 3, 4, giving cause for pessimism—if people need to shift their basic political ideologies to act on climate change, the prospect for further progress is bleak. New approaches are emerging that could sidestep these hurdles. One promising approach has been to highlight the co-benefits for society from acting on climate change7, referring to community benefits resulting from mitigation behaviours. As examples, mitigation efforts can reduce pollution11, 12, support economic development through green industries13, 14, or benefit population health by reducing disease or promoting healthier lifestyles (for example, cycling/walking instead of driving)12, 15, 16. A less obvious co-benefit involves community functioning, where climate change action can contribute to a more benevolent (caring and moral) community8, 17. One advantage of co-benefits is that they can appeal to people unconvinced or unconcerned about climate change, as they do not depend on believing climate change is real or important. However, two challenges remain for establishing their effectiveness in motivating public action. First, researchers have focused on some co-benefits, such as reduced pollution or economic development, without an integrated approach to understand how co-benefits are related and comparing their importance for motivating public action. Second, climate change requires a global solution, but most co-benefits research has been conducted in Western countries (for example, USA (ref. 16)). It is therefore unclear whether some co-benefits are more influential in different countries, similar to the variation observed in climate change risk perceptions across countries18. Our research addresses these challenges by providing an integrated framework for examining co-benefits, and by collecting data from around the world. By showing how perceptions of co-benefits are related to people’s motivations to act on climate change around the world, the findings could help researchers, policymakers and communicators develop effective local and global strategies for using co-benefits to motivate action. Data were obtained from 24 countries spanning all inhabited continents and with diverse carbon emission levels (see Supplementary Table 1). University student samples were selected to facilitate comparisons, as students typically occupy similar socio-economic positions across countries. We also obtained community samples in ten countries to establish the generalizability and robustness of findings. Research participants first indicated their beliefs about the reality and importance of climate change. Those who believed climate change is real (‘convinced’) considered what their nation would be like in the future if action had successfully mitigated climate change. Those unconvinced that climate change is real, for whom successful mitigation is not applicable, considered what their nation would be like in the future if people had taken action aimed at mitigating climate change. Participants then considered the potential co-benefits for their society in these scenarios. To develop an integrated framework, we noted that many co-benefits, such as economic development, new technologies, and improvements in disease or poverty, are captured in a model of people’s beliefs about the future of society that has been validated across a wide range of social issues, including climate change8, 17. We used this ‘collective futures’ model and added two mitigation co-benefits for this research: pollution, and green space (extent of parks and reserves). The collective futures model has four dimensions of co-benefits. Two dimensions address the social ‘conditions’ in which people live: Development (for example, economic development, scientific progress) and Dysfunction (for example, pollution, disease). Two further dimensions address the ‘character’ of people in society: Benevolence (whether people are caring and moral) and Competence (whether people are skilled and capable), reflecting the fundamental dimensions used to understand groups19, 20. Participants indicated whether these co-benefits would improve or worsen in their society (for example, if there were to be greater/lesser economic development, or if people would become more/less moral). The four dimensions formed reliable scales, as in previous research8, 17, indicating that people see close relationships between some co-benefits (for example, pollution and disease were components of a broader Dysfunction dimension), with lower reliabilities for unconvinced samples in a few countries (see Supplementary Section 1). We examined how these co-benefit dimensions were related to three measures of motivations to act on climate change21. The first assessed public and political actions (citizenship), such as voting for pro-environmental politicians and contributing time/money to pro-environmental groups. The second involved personal domestic actions, such as conserving energy and green consumerism. The third measured financial behaviour (donation), where participants were entered into a prize draw (150 US dollars in local currency), and committed an amount for the researchers to donate to a pro-environmental organization if they won. Correlations between these variables were computed in each country, and meta-analysis22 was used to identify how each co-benefit dimension was related to motivations to act. Meta-analysis computes the average correlation across all samples (effect size) weighted by sample size, with a 95% confidence interval indicating the likely range of this correlation. Meta-analysis also identifies whether the magnitude of the correlations varies substantially across the samples (Q-statistic). We first established the strength of relationships between co-benefits and motivations to act, including climate change importance as a benchmark. To provide the toughest test of the additional value of co-benefits, we focused first on ‘convinced’ participants, who were expected to show strong effects for climate change importance. Figure 1 shows that believing climate change is important had the strongest effect size across all action measures for student samples (n = 4,049). However, this effect varied significantly across countries. Critically, two co-benefits had effects of a comparable size to climate change importance. Development showed the strongest effect sizes for citizenship and personal actions and a weaker effect for donations, with effect sizes also varying across countries. Effect sizes for Benevolence were also relatively strong but were less variable across countries.
| http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n2/full/nclimate2814.html
|
![Meta-analyses showing average effect sizes (with 95% confidence intervals) and tests for cross-country variability (Q) for climate change importance and co-benefit dimensions with motivations to act on climate change for /`convinced[rsquor] participants (n = 4,049) across 24 countries.](http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n2/images_article/nclimate2814-f1.jpg)