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 2 / 18 PLOS ONE Promoting Pro-environmental Beliefs and Behaviour individual socio-demographic (e.g., age, gender) and psychological characteristics [5,6], con- textual factors, such as social norms [7–9], institutional design features of policies [10], and the framing of climate change communications [1,11]. Social science experiments reveal that promoting pro-environmental beliefs and behaviours is not easy. Rare are studies demonstrating homogenous and substantially important effects of an intervention on climate beliefs and behaviour [12,13]. Recent behavioural research highlights the potential of emotion-driven interventions to transform pro-environmental beliefs and actions [14–16]. However, empirical evidence remains incon- sistent. For instance, fear has been shown to have positive, mixed, or negligible effects on individuals’ attitudes and behaviours [17–20]. The evidence on the effectiveness of hope- inducing interventions is also mixed [21]. The potential of other emotions, such as empathy, is largely understudied. One of the recur- ring findings in social and political psychology is that inducing empathy via perspective-taking interventions can help people understand the world from different perspectives, motivate them feel empathy toward different others and the environment, and catalyze important attitudinal and behavioral changes [22–26]. These studies raise the possibility that empathic perspective taking interventions could motivate more pro-environmental beliefs and behavior in indi-

viduals. Such an intervention is reported here. We design a first-person, choose-your-own- adventure narrative game that involves living a few days in the life of a player’s future self and navigating the consequences of climate disasters, flooding, wildfires, drought, erosion, and food shortages, in the year 2121. The player becomes the story’s main character, making key decisions to address the personal consequences of future climate disasters. We bring together several strands of literature in designing our intervention. First, our design incorporates future scenarios. Research finds that future scenarios can be effective in engaging local communities in local climate change adaptation measures [27]. Our scenarios are based on scientific predictions about the UK and US climate in a hundred years’ time. Sec- ond, the intervention aims to elicit empathic perspective taking in individuals, by motivating them to see and imagine natural threats and risks related to climate change. Previous litera- ture shows that empathic concern mediates the effect of perspective taking interventions on a range of attitudes [28]. Third, we designed our game in the choose-your-own-adventure style, which harnesses the power of experiential learning and imagination (see [29] for other types of climate games), decreases psychological distance between people and the environment, and increases emotional engagement [30]. Previous research finds that direct personal experience of climate-related hazards is positively associated with people’s increased risk perceptions

about climate change [31–33], and imaginatively experiencing climate disasters could be a powerful tool for enhancing people’s understanding of the implications of climate change for themselves and for others. Lastly, our intervention differs from other instructional interven- tions that elicit empathy, which are commonly used in behavioural sciences, due to its more realistic setting and engaging nature. Aims and hypotheses The primary aim of this study is to examine the research question (RQ1) of whether adopting the perspective of one’s future self during hypothetical climate crises can increase individuals’ climate change-related beliefs, pro-environmental policy support, and behaviour. Our first set of hypotheses (H1) predict that taking the perspective of a future self via a climate choose- your-own-adventure game will promote pro-environmental (H1a) beliefs, (H1b) policy support, and (H1c) behaviour. The second research question (RQ2) explores the nature and intensity of emotions respondents experience while playing the climate game. More specif- ically, we are interested in whether the choose-your-own-adventure climate game enhances Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to EB. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.