Visual art inspired by climate change—An analysis of audience reactions to 37 artworks presented during 21st UN climate summit in Paris

the artwork relates to emotions, which can be negative or positive, or both. This is theoretically followed by a spontaneous generation of a first, general impression of the artwork. This impression contains the perceived quality of the artwork and a sense of how much the viewer can identify with the artist. The next step is to satisfy cognitive curiosity and includes general reflections on the artwork and climate change, climate change perception. The cognitions may then eventually relate positively to the motivation to act and to an environmentally friendly choice or action, or support of climate policies. Specific features of an artwork or the individual may make certain steps of this process leading to policy acceptance more or less effective. Method Data collection procedure In November 2015 and January 2016, the Climart research team traveled to Paris to survey audience responses to artworks presented in connection to the ARTCOP21 event. ARTCOP21 was a large conglomeration of exhibitions of climate-related art. Between September and December 2015, the ARTCOP21 art event was organized as a "global festival of cultural activity on climate change" (www.artcop21.com) accompanying the climate negotiations in Paris. In total, 551 events in 54 countries were registered in the project database. Ninety-nine of these events were taking place in Paris in November 2015, 50 of them categorized as "visual art," which was the focus of our analysis. Artworks were selected to cover a range of different visual

art forms, including paintings, sculptures, video installations, and happenings, and were dis- played in established art galleries, churches, a science museum, and at outdoor locations (a list of artworks can be found in S1 Table). The study was approved by the Norwegian Center for Research Data (approval number 45125). Oral consent was given by the participants. Sample In total, 883 individuals from the audiences at 37 different artworks were surveyed with a four- page paper-pencil questionnaire, an average of 24 participants per event (with a range of 15 to 38). This creates a data structure, where responses to the questionnaire are clustered into the different venues where the artworks were presented. The questionnaire was provided in either French or English, depending on the participants’ language abilities, and took about 10 min- utes to answer. Most of the respondents (78.7%) answered the French version of the question- naire. Most (69.9%) of the respondents reported having French nationality. Other larger Fig 1. Analysis framework for the relation between art and policy support. In green: input variables; in yellow: cognitive and emotional outcome variables; in red: behavioral outcome variable. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247331.g001 PLOS ONE Visual art inspired by climate change — An analysis of audience reactions PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247331 February 19, 2021 6 / 18