Studying attention to IPCC climate change maps with mobile eye-tracking

reported anxiety and gaze behaviour. In summary, visual attention to climate change visuali- sations appears to be mainly influenced by the inherent visual attributes of the maps, but the social context may subtly influence visual attention. Additionally, the comparison with aes- thetic viewing highlights relatively distinct attentional patterns in scientific versus aesthetic engagements. 1. Introduction Most of us have seen maps of the earth, often coloured in shades of red and dark orange, illus- trating the predicted rise in temperature or rainfalls over the coming decades. But beyond the broad message that we probably already knew, what did we pay attention to? Maps are a major instrument for reporting and communicating climate change to journalists, politicians, and the wider public [1]. They can convey a rich wealth of the spatial, temporal, and quantitative information agreed upon by the community in a simpler and more vivid manner [2]. Maps make up more than 25% of the visualisations in the annual reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These often global representations are widely circulated and used for further decisions and communication campaigns. The IPCC has invested efforts into build- ing better maps and visualisations [3], although suggestions from researchers for more solu- tion-oriented framing [4] remain valid criticism. Nevertheless, intuitions of experts on what constitutes good design in data visualisation do not always materialise, making it important to test data visualisations with the public empirically.

While map-viewing in general is being explored in various contexts through eye-tracking, aiming to answer a wide range of research questions [5–12], we know little about how people specifically look at world maps, particularly those visualising climate change. This gap can be surprising given how much the behavioural sciences have contributed to climate science com- munication by measuring public perceptions and attitudes toward the crisis, and how many recommendations for improving visualisations they have made over the years [1, 13, 14], along with improving textual contents [15]. While a few studies have recently confirmed the effec- tiveness of climate communication with maps [16], other studies raise concerns about possible biases induced by the same visualisations, for instance through the misuse of colour [17, 18]. In parallel, research on artwork perception highlights the importance of viewing context (such as laboratory versus gallery or museum environments, spatial layouts, and the authenticity of artworks) in shaping engagement and judgment, with distinct patterns emerging between cat- egories such as digital versus physical or genuine versus replica [19–26]. However, compari- sons between aesthetic and scientific viewing contexts remain underexplored, offering a promising direction for further investigation. To assess public responses and provide evidence-based recommendations, it is essential to move to flexible and varied data collection methodologies beyond traditional questionnaires

and focus groups. To address this, we demonstrate the feasibility and relevance of collecting behavioural data from the public as they engage with climate communications and, briefly, with reproduction of artworks, in situ. Mobile eye-tracking technology provides a relatively objective and unobtrusive means to measure where viewers direct their attention when engag- ing with visual stimuli. It is adaptable for use on screens, mobile devices, and in virtual reality, and can be scaled up to widespread, in situ implementation. Our study primarily aimed to deploy and validate mobile eye-tracking in a controlled lab setting to investigate how individuals direct their visual attention to climate projection maps. PLOS ONE Studying attention to IPCC climate change maps with mobile eye-tracking PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316909 January 10, 2025 2 / 17 Seeing, Ways of Knowing”, awarded to co-author Ophelia Deroy. The funders did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.