Situating climate change: Psychological distances as tool to understand the multifaceted dimensions of climate change meanings

Guttry, Corinna de; Süsser, Diana; Döring, Martin

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.06.015

Cited by 27 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…This is especially relevant because the impacts of climate change may differ between different geographical territories and may consequently be perceived differently. The description of results for each study is divided into three paragraphs based on environmental behavior: two studies explored the role of psychological distance in the commitment to adaptation behavior toward climate change (Niles et al, 2015;Singh et al, 2017); 10 studies focused on engagement in mitigation with reference to some dimensions of psychological distance and climate change (Spence et al, 2012;Busse and Menzel, 2014;Milfont et al, 2014;Carmi and Kimhi, 2015;Jones et al, 2017;Soliman et al, 2018;Chen et al, 2019;Griffioen et al, 2019;Kim and Ahn, 2019;Kyselá et al, 2019); seven studies analyzed the link between psychological distance and each dimension with mitigation and adaptation behaviors applied to climate change (Haden et al, 2012;Brügger et al, 2015aBrügger et al, , 2016Rickard et al, 2016;Schuldt et al, 2018;de Guttry et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2019).…”

Section: Results Of Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychological Distance and Climate Change: A Systematic Review on the Mitigation and Adaptation Behaviors

et al. 2020

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Background and Objective: Currently, climate change represents an existential, physical, and psychological threat. Therefore, mitigation and adaptation actions and measures have become increasingly necessary to preserve individual and collective well-being. The psychological distance is one of the main psychological constructs that explains the most concrete or abstract perception of the objects and events surrounding people. The psychological distance is a multidimensional construct, and in accordance with the construal level theory (CLT), temporal, hypothetical, spatial, and social distance are considered the most critical dimensions. This systematic review aims to provide an update of the literature on the role of psychological distance in the commitment to engagement mitigation and adaptation attitudes toward climate change. Method: The review was carried out following PRISMA guidelines and a systematic search was performed on PubMed, Psycinfo, Web of Science, Cochrane, and Scopus databases. Results: Nineteen articles have been identified as being eligible for the final synthesis. Results showed, in general, that individuals have a higher propensity to perform pro-environmental and resilient behaviors against climate change when it is perceived as more proximal and concrete within the construct of psychological distance. However, not all studies show this result. Some studies showed that, despite people considering climate changes as real and tangible, they do not perform mitigation and adaptation behaviors. Other studies showed that people implement these behaviors despite perceiving climate changes as distal and abstract. Conclusions: The current literature shows the existence of a relation among psychological distance and pro-environmental and resilient behaviors applied to climate change. For a deeper understanding of the conflicting results that emerged, more studies are necessary to explore the possible presence of further psychological variables involved in the relation within psychological distance, mitigation, and adaptation in environmental contexts.

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Section: Results Of Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychological Distance and Climate Change: A Systematic Review on the Mitigation and Adaptation Behaviors

et al. 2020

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“…Government intervention, such as policies, laws, environmental public communications and involvement of citizens, as well as environmental education, traditional media, environmental content shared on social media and advertising campaigns can play an important part in promoting environmental citizenship behavior (Bauer et al , 2020; de Vries, 2020; Georgiou et al , 2021). Unfortunately, although most people are aware of phenomena related to continued unsustainable human activities, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, ice melt, plastic pollution and ocean pollution, only few of them are willing to embrace the global community goal of “saving the planet” (de Guttry et al , 2019; Huang, 2016; Moussaoui and Desrichard, 2016; Wang et al , 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental citizenship behavior and sustainability apps: an empirical investigation

D’Arco

Marino

2022

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Purpose This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of sustainability app on environmental citizenship behavior on the basis of norm-activation model. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey, which comprises five variables (i.e. awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, personal norms, environmental citizenship behavior in a private sphere and environmental citizenship behavior in a public sphere) measured through 16 items, was conducted in the USA by using Amazon Mechanical Turk. With 549 valid respondents’ answers in hand, the collected data were analyzed applying a multi-group structural equation modelling technique with IBM SPSS AMOS 23 software program. Findings The results revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, personal norms and environmental citizenship behavior in both private and public sphere. Furthermore, this study attested that sustainability apps utilization has a moderating effect on the predictors of environmental citizenship behaviors. Originality/value Past studies have seldom examined the contribution of mobile apps to environmental sustainability. This paper enriches the extant academic literature in the field of technology for behavior change, and bears significant implications on how sustainability apps can be adopted by governments, policymakers, organizations and teacher educators to engage people and stimulate environmental citizenship behaviors.

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“…Four studies conducted expert interviews, consulting climate-change communication specialists (Coulter et al, 2019), water-management experts (Michel-Guillou, 2015), residents of a flood-prone area (de Guttry et al, 2019) and farmers (Schattman et al, 2021). In all four, interviews were coded to identify mentions of PD.…”

Section: Qualitative Studies and Text Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants often used PD dynamically, connecting local and global as well as present and future aspects of climate change within the same interview. Sometimes, distance was even used consciously to create space from overwhelming climate change consequences (de Guttry et al, 2019). This was contrasted with issues such as water management, which seemed more concrete and proximal than climate change, leading to difficulties in linking the two (Michel--Guillou, 2015).…”

Section: Qualitative Studies and Text Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic review of the psychological distance of climate change: Towards the development of an evidence-based construct

Keller¹,

Je²,

Richardson³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The construct of psychological distance has gained traction as an explanation of why climate change is difficult to act on; it often feels far removed, with impacts arising in remote locations to other people or in an uncertain future. However, recent studies and narrative reviews have pointed out inconsistencies in the conceptualisation, operationalisation and results regarding the psychological distance of climate change, with research evidently struggling to develop the construct and determine its place in explaining and promoting pro-environmental behaviour. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature aimed at building an evidence base on which to develop research on psychological distance. Following a systematic search of three databases, 73 records with 84 individual studies were identified, which measured or manipulated the concept in relation to climate change. We find that psychological distance in the context of climate change is a dynamic, context-specific, multidimensional construct, which may be leading to current challenges in measurement and manipulation. We identify inconsistencies in cross-sectional and experimental studies and develop ideas for how these can be addressed. We recommend that researchers focus on specific aspects of climate change rather than a general notion of psychological distance towards climate change (e.g., studying different framings of the same event, policy or mitigation project). In doing this, it would be most effective to employ a bottom-up approach to developing the concept, with the further aims of determining how this more specific psychological distance is related to other variables such as identity or concern, and introducing more diversity in sample selection and research design.

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Situating climate change: Psychological distances as tool to understand the multifaceted dimensions of climate change meanings

Cited by 27 publications

References 23 publications

The Psychological Distance and Climate Change: A Systematic Review on the Mitigation and Adaptation Behaviors

The Psychological Distance and Climate Change: A Systematic Review on the Mitigation and Adaptation Behaviors

Environmental citizenship behavior and sustainability apps: an empirical investigation

A systematic review of the psychological distance of climate change: Towards the development of an evidence-based construct

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