When climate change information causes undesirable side effects: The influence of environmental self-identity and biospheric values on threat responses

Abstract

Environmental campaigns often try to promote proenvironmental behaviour (PEB) by presenting threatening information. Evidence suggests that this strategy can be successful. However, threatening information may also have unintended consequences. People often cope with threat in symbolic ways that do not target the problem at hand. We presented threatening information on climate change (vs. nonthreatening information) and assessed direct (i.e., PEB intention, donation willingness) and symbolic (i.e., group evaluation) defensive responses. Besides a higher PEB intention and donation willingness, individuals with high environmental self-identity responded also in a symbolic defensive way to the threatening information. They evaluated groups that deviated from the collective social norm more negatively. People with low biospheric values also faced the threat in a symbolic way (i.e., more negative evaluation of liberal system-supporting groups). The results suggest that threatening environmental information can have side effects in the form of symbolic defense among individuals with low as well as high environmental self-identity and biospheric values.