Climate action
Social Processes. I am interested in social strategies for promoting behaviors, which contrast with common messaging techniques that motivate through, for example, incentives, priming values, or scientific information. My first efforts to take this perspective explored the spread of pro-environmental actions through social networks (Geiger, Swim et al., 2019). Second, with four years of funding provided by Mount Cuba Botanical Society in Delaware to support Gillis, a Penn State graduate student at the time, we undertook a neighborhood intervention with a community newsletter and activities to promote landscaping with native plants. Third, Nathan Geiger, John Fraser, and I are finishing a study illustrating how social support creates hope about climate action and subsequent participation in working with others to address climate change (Geiger et al., in preparation). Fourth, I am pleased to support my graduate student , Joe Guerriero with his NSF funded dissertation research on legacy framing to overcome intergenerational climate injustice. I am forming a team to develop a campus intervention to encourage student engagement by drawing on this research on social support, research on pluralistic ignorance where people underestimate others' climate concerns and actions, and the importance of narratives for community involvement and persuasion.
Policies. With the evidence that most are already concerned about climate change, examining relative preferences among climate change policies is crucial. I have examined how policy attributes influence public support for energy policies support (Swim & Geiger, 2021) and how perceptions of the anticipated impacts of policies on the environment, society, and economy explain support (Geiger et al., 2021, Swim & Geiger, 2021). Research in progress examines Pennsylvania residents’ preferences for state energy policies. Of interest is whether residents' evaluations, especially Republicans’ evaluation, of climate policies can be improved with a market-based approach that uses incentives (reducing company taxes) rather than the typical approach of using disincentives (i.e., fees leveled with RGGI) to affect emissions from electric utilities.
Image from
Image from
Hope. Developing hope is a common goal in climate change activism, but research evidence on the power of hope is mixed. A major lesson from my research is that researchers are missing the power of hope to motivate behavior because of a mismatch between the efforts to instill hope, measure hope in the research, and the actions they hope to inspire. My initial work with hope was part of the evaluation of a five-year NSF-funded interpreter/educator training program led by Boston’s New England Aquarium engaging with over 170 zoos and aquariums targeted the specific action of talking about climate change (Geiger et al., 2019; Geiger, Swim, & Fraser, 2017; Geiger, Swim, Fraser, et al., 2017; Swim & Fraser, 2014; Swim et al., 2017, 2018; Swim & Fraser, 2013, 2013). The success of this high-impact study contrasts with small effect sizes from other climate experiments that target hope, as documented in our recent meta-analysis on hope and climate change engagement (Geiger, Dwyer, et al., 2023). Correlational data from this meta-analysis confirms the importance of targeting hope about behaviors to facilitate that behavior.