Promoting Pro-environmental Beliefs and Behaviour: Choose-Your-Own Story Futuristic Climate Game

PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317773 March 31, 2025 11 / 18 PLOS ONE Promoting Pro-environmental Beliefs and Behaviour Lastly, playing the climate game has the direct effect of decreasing respondents’ willingness to talk about climate change with others (−0.03, CI: [0.04 to 0.06]) (Fig 6, bottom right trian- gle). However, when playing the game induces empathic concern, it has the indirect effect of increasing respondents’ willingness to talk about climate change (ACME: 0.05, CI: [0.04 to 0.06]). Study 2 (US) Study 2 aimed to validate the previous findings in the more polarized U.S. context and test whether the observed effect of the climate game was driven by the climate change informa- tion provided (which was constant across experimental conditions). To isolate this effect, we included a placebo game condition with no information. However, no difference was found between the placebo game with and without information in the US sample. Therefore, for simplicity and consistency with the UK study, we combined the two placebo conditions in the US sample and compared them to the treatment group. The results show that the manipulation worked well, with respondents in the climate change game imagining their future selves more (M = 3.89; SD = 1.13; range: 1–5) than those in the placebo games (M = 3.59; SD = 1.17; two-tailed p < 0.001). Furthermore, playing the climate game (as opposed to placebo games) made the American respondents much more empathetic (MD = 0.21; SE = 0.02, two-tailed p < 0.001; range: 0–1),

but also more helpless, sad, guilty, anxious and angry, and less happy (see Fig 7). Fig 6. Causal mediation analyses (Study 1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317773.g006