Approaches to Climate Change and the American Public

Last registered on August 11, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Approaches to Climate Change and the American Public
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0011868
Initial registration date
August 01, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
August 10, 2023, 12:55 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
August 11, 2023, 8:08 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Harvard University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-08-01
End date
2028-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The project aims to understand what factors matter most for U.S. public engagement in climate action. In particular, the project aims to study how climate beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors relate to personal characteristics, demographic traits, and economic preferences.

The project will provide video treatments to see to what extent climate attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors change after receiving information on climate change. The climate change videos are designed based on various theories from behavioral science and educational psychology—to see how different approaches to communicating climate change affect policy preferences and climate-friendly behaviors.

An obfuscated follow-up study will be conducted to test the persistence of treatment effects for individuals who participate in the main experimental survey.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Okafor, Chika. 2023. "Approaches to Climate Change and the American Public." AEA RCT Registry. August 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11868-1.1
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We run online surveys in the United States. We recruit participants through professional survey companies to ensure that our sample is representative of the U.S. population along key dimensions - gender, race, age, and political affiliation. To be eligible, subjects must be adults (age 18+) and must be citizens of the country. The surveys will be performed online.
Intervention Start Date
2023-08-15
Intervention End Date
2023-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Support for and views on climate mitigation policies, support for and views on climate friendly behaviors, voting preferences across major policy areas, real outcomes (e.g., donation to charity, signing petition)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
We will ask questions about perceptions on climate change and various climate policies; views, ranking, and voting preferences of major policy areas including climate change; and views, stated preference, and revealed preference for engaging in various climate actions. We will construct various indexes that summarize support for climate change, support for government intervention on climate issues, beliefs and knowledge about climate change, and so on. In the text analysis, we will construst measures of “topics” and “sentiment” using text analysis tools.

We will also tell respondents that they have been automatically enrolled in a lottery to win a given amount of dollars. Before being informed if they have won, each respondent will decide how much to donate the winnings (if at all) to a particular environmental organization. We use the amount respondents wish to donate as a (real) measure of support for climate change. We will also ask respondents if they are willing to sign a pro-climate petition. Lastly, if partnership with a solar company is successfully established, we will measure real-world changes in respondents’ willingness to learn about and/or adopt solar technologies.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
We will both evaluate the experimental outcome variables, as well as the heterogeneity of individual characteristics of respondents. This will involve analyzing outcomes by sub-groups as defined by income, age, gender, political affiliation, education level, employment status, economic preferences, and climate segmentation (potentially adopting a methodology developed by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication).
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
In the treatment group, there are three treatment arms. Respondents will see either: video A, video B, or video A immediately followed by video B. Video A provides information on the major problems caused by climate change (e.g., heatwaves, storms, loss of biodiversity). Video B provides information on the major opportunities introduced by fighting climate change (e.g., cleaner air, less wildfires, better agricultural practices). The treatment will be followed by questions on climate attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Blocks of questions about different climate change mitigation policies will also be asked to understand respondents’ level of support for different types of climate policies.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
The randomization will be done by the survey software (Qualtrics).
Randomization Unit
We randomize individual participants into control and treatment groups.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1 country
Sample size: planned number of observations
2,500 respondents (approx. 500 for obfuscated follow-up study)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Around 625 respondents for the control group, around 625 respondents for each of the three treatment arms
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Harvard IRB
IRB Approval Date
2021-04-15
IRB Approval Number
IRB21-0473