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

groups were Spanish, US American, Dutch, English (each 2.0%). Slightly more than half of the respondents (56.2%) were female, 43.8% were male. The mean age of participants was 36.6 years (SD = 16.4). Most (71.0%) of the participants hold a university degree; the remainder held a college or technical degree (9.2%), a high school diploma (15.9%), or a primary school diploma as the highest degree (3.9%). Participants had a strong interest in art, which is not sur- prising since at least some of the studied pieces were presented in gallery spaces. Involvement in art ranged from about a third (33.1%) describing themselves as art-lovers, half (50.9%) reporting that they like watching art, and some (14.2%) indicating that they sometimes like art, sometimes not. Very few (1.8%) reported that they do not like art at all. However, the percent- age of art experienced people in relation to less experienced people varied strongly between venues (for single artworks that were presented in public spaces or a science museum, up to 40% placed themselves in the "sometimes like/sometimes do not like art" or "do not like art" categories). Only some (9.6%) reported that they knew the artist who produced the respective piece from before. Measures The survey instrument was designed to capture the variables outlined in the theoretical model above. The items were developed specifically for this study by the research team, based on the literature presented in the introduction. All items were treated as ordered-categorical in the

analyses, which results in that the links between the latent variables and the items in the models become probit links instead of linear regression links. A confirmatory factor analysis was con- ducted based on the expected variable structure and received a good model fit (Chi2 = 452.12, df = 128, p < .001, Chi2/df = 3.53; RMSEA = .054 [.048 .059]; CFI = .96; TLI = .95; SRMR = .043). See S2 and S3 Tables for the loadings of the indicators on the respective latent variables, correlations between the variables, and measures of composite reliability and discriminant validity. In general, the deeper analysis of the measurement model underlines its good fit as the composite reliabilities of three out of four latent variables are strong, also corresponding to high Average Variance Extracted (AVE) scores. However, for the "identification with the art- ist" variable, the numbers indicate a challenge with the internal consistency of the measure and potential overlap with the "reflection on the artwork" variable. Therefore, we decided to drop the variable "Identification with the artist" from the analyses. Removing the latent variable and the corresponding indicators from the measurement model has little effect on the overall model fit (however, RMSEA and the Chi2/df indicate a slightly worse fit of the model without "identification with the artist": Chi2 = 424.17, df = 87, p < .001, Chi2/df = 4.88; RMSEA = .066 [.060 .073]; CFI = .96; TLI = .94; SRMR = .044). The lower part of the S2 Table and the above

diagonal part of the S3 Table display the estimates for the measurement model with "identifica- tion with the artist" excluded. The emotional reaction to the artwork. The participants were asked to what extent the artwork brought up each of a list of feelings within them. From this list, happiness, hope, inspi- ration/enthusiasm were defined as positive emotions, whereas anger, anxiety, and sadness/dis- appointment that nothing is happening to prevent climate change, were defined as negative emotions. The items were answered on a seven-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). Perceived quality of the artwork. The perceived quality of the artwork was measured with one item: "The artwork appears to be of considerable artistic quality." The item was answered on a seven-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Identification with the artist. Identification with the artist was measured by three items. This variable was planned to be included in the analysis as it is part of the conceptual model but was dropped from the analysis due to poor reliability and discriminant validity (see 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 7 / 18