Geiger Nathaniel, Swim Janet K, Fraser John
School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
The Media School, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2025 Jan;64(1):e12837. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12837.
Hope is a future-oriented emotion that attunes people to the possibility of positive change, and thus could potentially catalyse societal engagement with climate change. A recent meta-analysis suggests that the relationship between hope and climate action is most robust when the target of hope is climate engagement (i.e. action hope) rather than climate change more broadly. Yet, this previous meta-analysis also suggests that fostering action hope and climate engagement may be challenging via typical short media messages used in many studies. Here we consider an alternative source of action hope: receiving social support. Two studies tested whether social support motivates climate action via increased action hope. Study 1 (correlational online survey, pre-registered, N = 887) demonstrates that, as predicted, both instrumental and emotional support predict intentions to take civic action and these effects are explained by action hope. Study 2 (field study, N = 84, N = 520) mostly replicates and extends these findings in a field setting, demonstrating that social support recipients' action hope is also associated with social support reported by support providers (here, environmental educators) and that this action hope again explains a possible relationship between social support and climate engagement.
希望是一种面向未来的情绪，它使人们关注积极变化的可能性，因此有可能促进社会对气候变化的参与。最近的一项荟萃分析表明，当希望的目标是气候参与（即行动希望）而不是更广泛意义上的气候变化时，希望与气候行动之间的关系最为紧密。然而，之前的这项荟萃分析也表明，通过许多研究中使用的典型简短媒体信息来培养行动希望和气候参与可能具有挑战性。在此，我们考虑行动希望的另一个来源：获得社会支持。两项研究测试了社会支持是否通过增加行动希望来激励气候行动。研究1（预注册的在线相关性调查，N = 887）表明，正如预期的那样，工具性支持和情感支持都能预测采取公民行动的意图，并且这些影响可以由行动希望来解释。研究2（实地研究，N = 84，N = 520）在实地环境中大多重复并扩展了这些发现，表明社会支持接受者的行动希望也与支持提供者（这里是环境教育工作者）报告的社会支持相关，并且这种行动希望再次解释了社会支持与气候参与之间可能存在的关系。
