Communicating the Economic Impact of Science Funding Cuts Changes Attitudes and Motivates Action

In the United States, recent cuts to federal science funding have widespread negative consequences for research, healthcare, and the economy. Scalable behavioral interventions that communicate the impact of science funding cuts could support informed policy-related decisions and bridge partisan divides. In two preregistered psychological experiments (N=5,342) with politically-representative samples of U.S. adults, we tested novel text, quiz, and map-based interventions that illustrated economic losses associated with National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding cuts. Across the political spectrum, the interventions robustly and reliably decreased approval of funding cuts, and increased perceived knowledge and negative local impact. Interactive interventions featuring quizzes and maps selectively motivated further action (e.g., contacting congressional representatives, sharing information). We scaled these interventions via a public website (https://scienceimpacts.org/); a third study analyzing naturalistic user data (N=24,028) revealed converging evidence of effectiveness. Overall, scalable interventions that interactively communicated economic impact changed attitudes and motivated action to support science funding.