Wang Susie, Hurlstone Mark J, Leviston Zoe, Walker Iain, Lawrence Carmen
School of Psychology, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia.
Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2019 Feb 22;10:230. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00230. eCollection 2019.
The public perception of climate change as abstract and distant may undermine climate action. According to construal level theory, whether a phenomenon is perceived as psychologically distant or close is associated with whether it is construed as abstract or concrete, respectively. Previous work has established a link between psychological distance and climate action, but the associated role of construal level has yet to be explored in depth. In two representative surveys of Australians ( = 217 and = 216), and one experiment ( = 319), we tested whether construal level and psychological distance from climate change predicted pro-environmental intentions and policy support, and whether manipulating distance and construal increased pro-environmental behaviors such as donations. Results showed that psychological closeness to climate change predicted more engagement in pro-environmental behaviors, while construal level produced inconsistent results, and manipulations of both variables failed to produce increases in pro-environmental behaviors. In contrast with the central tenet of construal level theory, construal level was unrelated to psychological distance in all three studies. Our findings suggest that the hypothesized relationship between construal level and psychological distance may not hold in the context of climate change, and that it may be difficult to change pro-environmental behavior by manipulating these variables.
公众将气候变化视为抽象且遥远的观念可能会削弱气候行动。根据解释水平理论，一种现象在心理上被视为遥远还是接近，分别与它被解释为抽象还是具体相关联。先前的研究已经建立了心理距离与气候行动之间的联系，但解释水平的相关作用尚未得到深入探讨。在对澳大利亚人的两项代表性调查（(n = 217)和(n = 216)）以及一项实验（(n = 319)）中，我们测试了对气候变化的解释水平和心理距离是否能预测环保意图和政策支持，以及操纵距离和解释水平是否会增加诸如捐赠等环保行为。结果表明，与气候变化在心理上的亲近感预示着更多地参与环保行为，而解释水平产生了不一致的结果，并且对这两个变量的操纵都未能增加环保行为。与解释水平理论的核心原则相反，在所有三项研究中，解释水平与心理距离均无关。我们的研究结果表明，在气候变化背景下，解释水平与心理距离之间的假设关系可能不成立，并且通过操纵这些变量来改变环保行为可能会很困难。
