Open Collections

Radke, Jade

University of British Columbia

Despite the climate emergency, few people are acting on climate change. One potential reason for inaction is that climate communication often focuses on the negative effects of climate change and the need to make personal sacrifices. Such communication can make people retreat from the issue rather than engage with it. To address this, we combined happiness science with climate science in a new happy climate approach that focuses on the happiness benefits of climate action. In Study 1 (N=1320) presented in Chapter 2, we randomly assigned participants to read one of four messages: happy climate, neutral, disaster, or happy-only. Participants then selected the climate actions they would be willing to engage in. We found that the happy climate message resulted in the most individual and civic climate actions chosen. In Study 2 (N=779) presented in Chapter 3, participants were presented with 15 climate action statements and asked to rate how likely they are to engage in the action and how happy doing so would make them feel. These actions were either framed to emphasize what they could do more to benefit the environment or what they could do less to benefit the environment. We found that those in the do-more-good condition were significantly more likely to engage in climate action than those in the do-less-bad condition, and this effect was mediated by a boost in happiness. In Study 3 (N=302) presented in Chapter 4, participants could choose between receiving a guaranteed 10 cent refund per bottle for recycling or opt for a chance to win a higher amount of money. We found that people preferred and were happier with probabilistic rewards for recycling than certain rewards. The results from the three studies presented in this thesis highlight the importance of happiness for climate action.

Text

2024-08-12

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88921

Resources, Environment and Sustainability

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/