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 13 / 18 PLOS ONE Promoting Pro-environmental Beliefs and Behaviour Consistent with the findings of the UK study, playing the climate game has a positive within- subject effect on individuals’ willingness to engage in future conversations about climate change (MD = 0.20; SE = 0.04; two-tailed p < 0.001) (see also S6 Table for full models). Causal mediation analyses The results of the causal mediation analyses show the following patterns. Playing the climate game exerts a positive and statistically and substantively significant indirect effect on pro- environmental beliefs (ACME: 0.99, CI: [0.79 to 1.2]) and respondents’ willingness to discuss climate change with their friends and family in the future (ACME: 0.03, CI: [0.02 to 0.04]) and this relationship goes through the increased levels of empathetic concern elicited by the game. The models also show that the direct effect of climate game on pro-environmental beliefs become negative (−1.28, CI: [−1.68 to − 0.84]). There are no indirect or direct effect of climate game on Americans’ policy preferences, which differs from the UK Study results— perhaps because public policies surrounding climate change are so highly partisan in the US. However, like in the UK sample, there is a negative indirect effect of climate game on probability of Americans to sign a pro-environmental petition (ACME: − 0.12, CI: [−0.15 to 0.09]) (Fig 8). Fig 8. Causal mediation analyses (Study 2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317773.g008