The personal assessments of the current and expected future state of the environment by 3232 community respondents in 18 nations were investigated at the local, national, and global spatial levels. These assessments were compared to a ranking of each country’s environmental quality by an expert panel. Temporal pessimism (“things will get worse”) was found in the assessments at all three spatial levels. Spatial optimism bias (“things are better here than there”) was found in the assessments of current environmental conditions in 15 of 18 countries, but not in the assessments of the future. All countries except one exhibited temporal pessimism, but significant differences between them were common. Evaluations of current environmental conditions also differed by country. Citizens’ assessments of current conditions, and the degree of comparative optimism, were strongly correlated with the expert panel’s assessments of national environmental quality. Aside from the value of understanding global trends in environmental assessments, the results have important implications for environmental policy and risk management strategies

As the issues related to climate change intensify, new methods to raise awareness of environmental issues, foster pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, and offer a viable alternative to traditional environmental education are needed. In recent years, various computer games and mobile apps targeting sustainability-related information, attitude, and behaviors have been developed. In this systematic review, we aimed to verify which pro-environmental information, attitudes, and behaviors are targeted by serious games and gamified apps, how their efficiency is tested, and the main results. A total of 29 studies were included in the analysis. The results show that serious games and apps were used to decrease energy consumption, water spending, and food consumption, and increase sustainable mobility. Furthermore, technology was used to offer pro-environmental education regarding a myriad of issues. Most interventions were successful and some of them did have significant effects while others provided only short-term changes. The limitations of the current approaches are discussed together with some future expansions that can help develop more efficiency in this domain.

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People’s perceptions of climate change represent a growing concern, especially when these perceptions entail the denial of climate change. Past studies have highlighted the detrimental role of conspiracist beliefs concerning climate change regarding people’s perceptions on this matter. However, the effects of generic conspiracy beliefs and the different types of beliefs determining skepticism about climate change, as well as that of an individual’s personality, are still an open area of inquiry. Our cross-sectional study (N = 842) explored the relationships between the degree to which people hold different generic conspiracy beliefs, their personality characteristics (as defined within the Big Five taxonomy), and climate change beliefs (i.e., in its occurrence and anthropogenic causation). Results indicated common predictors of these dimensions of climate change beliefs, specifically three of the five types of generic conspiracy beliefs, extraversion, agreeability, and intellect/imagination as personality factors. While conspiracy beliefs related to personal well-being emerged as related to climate change skepticism, those in government malfeasance and information control were found to be associated with more acceptance of climate change and its anthropogenic causation. These findings reveal a mixed pattern of relationships between different conspiracist beliefs and climate change perceptions and suggest the complex psychological and ideological underpinnings of the attitudes towards climate change.