Alleviating misconceptions about Earth's climate: evidence of behavioral learning in stock‐and‐flow simulations

Abstract

Stock‐and‐flow simulation tools, which provide experiences of cause‐and‐effect relationships, are likely to be effective ways to overcome climate misconceptions. However, little is known about the ability of simulation tools to enable the transfer of system dynamics knowledge to subsequent tasks. The primary objective of this research was to use stronger transfer problems in simulation tools and to test the resulting transfer of knowledge. In an experiment, 120 participants were randomly assigned to problems that varied in the use of a stock‐and‐flow simulation tool, Dynamic Climate Change Simulator (DCCS); and, a subsequent paper‐and‐pencil Climate Stabilization (CS) task. Climate misconceptions reduced significantly in the following CS task across problems where the stock behavior was either identical or different between DCCS and CS tasks. Playing DCCS helped people to transfer their system dynamics knowledge to the CS task. We discuss the advantages of using stock‐and‐flow simulation tools for climate education and policy research. © 2019 System Dynamics Society

An Empirical Study of the Impact of Systems Thinking and Simulation on Sustainability Education

“…Simulation is an efficient way of teaching sustainability, not only for the problem represented, but very likely for other problems with a similar systemic structure. Findings regarding the transfer of knowledge are consistent with Kumar and Dutt [94] who find that simulation helps transfer stock-and-flow learning from one problem to another. This transfer effect has the potential to make sustainability education more efficient and more pattern-based.…”

Does correlation heuristic dependence reduce due to classroom teaching? A case study from India

“…Research indicates that the population has issues understanding and solving the pervasive nature of stock-and-flow problems in everyday life. Even the highly educated strata of the people with strong managerial and mathematics backgrounds find stock-flow problems difficult and unintuitive ( Sterman and Sweeney, 2002 ; Kumar and Dutt, 2018a ).…”

“…Not all stock-and-flow problems are as trivial as filling a bathtub and managing a bank account. Stock-flow principles also govern large sector industries and the Earth’s climatic system ( Kumar and Dutt, 2018a ). For example, the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHG) increases with GHG emissions.…”

“…Instead, the effect of the rise of GHG in the environment can only be observed in the far future in the form of climatic disasters ( Sterman and Sweeney, 2002 , 2007 ). Thus, dependence on faulty problem-solving techniques like the correlation heuristic for crucial systems such as Earth’s climatic system might lead to a wait-and-see behavior towards climate change, further worsening Earth’s atmospheric condition ( Kumar and Dutt, 2018a ). Due to the significance of stock-and-flow principles in governing essential issues such as climate change, it is necessary to educate and increase people’s conceptual understanding and knowledge of stock-and-flow problems and improve their decision-making abilities ( Richardson, 2011 ; Béchard et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Based on the theories mentioned above, researchers have developed decision aids to improve people’s understanding of stock-flow systems (refer to Dutt and Gonzalez, 2012a ; Kumar and Dutt, 2018a , b ). Decision-aids such as Dynamic Climate Change Simulator (DCCS) improve people’s understanding of the stock-flow problem by providing experience in a simulated environment.…”