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 14 / 18 PLOS ONE Promoting Pro-environmental Beliefs and Behaviour Discussion (Study 1 and Study 2) Across two studies conducted in the UK and US, our project yields the following main results. First, counter to H1a, H1b and H1c, playing the climate game has no main effect on people’s beliefs about climate change, their support for environmental policies, and their self-reported behavior. However, causal mediation analyses reveal that the null effects may be due to con- tradictory causal processes underlying the relationship between the choose-your-own climate game and the outcomes of interest. The following patterns are worth discussing. We find that across both samples, the climate game indirectly increases people’s pro-environmental beliefs, for instance, the idea that the cli- mate is human-made, or that climate change will harm future generations. This indirect effect goes via experienced empathic concern. When we account for empathic concern in our models via causal mediation analyses, we also observe a negative direct effect of the climate game on pro-environmental beliefs. The negative direct effects and positive indirect effects cancel each other out, leading to null total effects. When it comes to pro-environmental policy support, the results are mixed, and mostly null. Finally, playing the choose-your-own-adventure climate game increases respondents’ willingness to sign a petition when we account for empathic con-

cern, but those who feel empathy as a result of playing the game are less willing to sign it. Put it differently, empathy mediates the negative indirect effect of the game on signing the petition. Finally, consistent with H2, the climate game elicits higher levels of empathic emotion in individuals. The effects are both statistically and substantively important, equaling to β=0.26 in the UK, and β=0.21 in the US sample (in a scale of 0 to 1). Expressed in standardized terms, they are equivalent to more than one standard deviation (SD) (β=1.06) among UK respon- dents (p < 0.001), and 0.72 SD (p < 0.001) among US respondents. Conclusion This study considers whether an innovative choose-your-own-adventure story game can encourage people to take the perspective of a future self experiencing climate crises, and whether this future-oriented perspective-taking can make people more pro-environmental in their attitudes, policy support, and behaviours. The findings of this study contribute to differ- ent strands of social and behavioural science research and have implications for policymaking in the field of climate change communication, persuasion, and education. First, playing the choose-your-own-adventure story game made individuals much more empathetic, with the effect size equaling to more than one standard deviation (SD) (β=1.06) among UK respondents (p < 0.000), and 0.72 SD among US respondents. This empathy- inducing effect of the climate game is substantively greater than the usually observed effects in

social science research about perspective-taking, empathy, and opinion formation [22,23,35]. The unique value of this game lies in its ability to effectively overcome the inherent challenges of eliciting empathy for non-human subjects, such as the environment, by fostering emo- tional connections and encouraging perspective-taking. Scholars have recently suggested that storytelling could be a way of facilitating empathy for the nature [26]. This research adds to this scholarship, by showing that a choose-your-own-adventure game that incorporates the elements of storytelling has potential to enhance empathy in individuals. Moreover, our results show that empathy mediates the positive indirect effect of climate game on people’s pro- environmental beliefs in the UK and US. These results speak to the recent call by social scien- tists to place empathy at the center of policymaking on sustainability [36]. To the extent that empathy is conducive to better political judgements [24]) on different issues, including the environmental decision-making [37], fostering empathy among children and adults via choose- your-own-adventure games at schools, and beyond can have significant democratic value.