Mobilizing Climate Action with Moral Appeals: An 8-1 Weeks Field-Experiment with a Climate Action App

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Mobilizing Climate Action with Moral Appeals: An 8-1 Weeks Field-Experiment with a Climate Action App | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Mobilizing Climate Action with Moral Appeals: An 8-1 Weeks Field-Experiment with a Climate Action App Viktoria Spaiser, Nicole Nisbett This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6202641/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 10 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Effective climate change mitigation requires profound lifestyle changes and citizens’ support for transformational climate policies. We present here a comprehensive, highly granular, field-experiment dataset of people’s daily, real-life behaviours measured in CO2e across six domains as well as their civic and political behaviour. The data was collected over eight weeks via a bespoke smartphone app and is enriched by people’s daily reflections on their change trajectories and by data on political leaning, emotions, agency, socio-demographics, values, attitudes and social norm. The pre-registered study shows that exposing people to moral appeals results in carbon footprint reduction, although not in all domains, and in greater civic and political engagement. The data also reveals that, covariates such as values, political leaning and agency, affect the outcomes and the effect of the treatment. Importantly, we find that moral appeals can mobilise people leaning politically to the centre and right too. Scientific community and society/Social sciences/Climate change/Climate change mitigation Scientific community and society/Social sciences/Interdisciplinary studies Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files SupplementaryInformation.pdf Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 01 May, 2025 Reviews received at journal 21 Apr, 2025 Reviews received at journal 17 Apr, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 12 Apr, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 09 Apr, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 18 Mar, 2025 Reviewers invited by journal 16 Mar, 2025 Editor assigned by journal 13 Mar, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 13 Mar, 2025 First submitted to journal 11 Mar, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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