Primary Outcomes (explanation)
I will estimate the impact of the treatment on various dependent variables, such as perceptions of climate change policies, climate-change-related political participation, and voting behaviours. Each of these will be estimated differently. First, respondents will report their perception of the viability and urgency of climate policies using a slider scale. After the treatment, the survey will present different pairs of contrasting statements, following the graded forced scale question format (Zhang et al., 2023). Respondents will indicate which statement they agree with the most and to what extent using a 0-100 slider scale, where 50 means they are equally distant from both statements. For example, after the treatment and control videos, the questionnaire will ask respondents to choose between ‘The policies against climate change are important, but at the moment, they are too expensive for Italian citizens’ and ‘The costs of the green energy transition are acceptable for Italian citizens’ on a zero to 100 scale (economic feasibility of climate change policy).
Using a similar scale, respondents choose between ‘Right now, Italy has more urgent needs and should not worry too much about climate change’ and ‘Climate change should be the Italian government's top priority right now’ (urgency of climate change policies). Another slider scale question asks to choose between ‘Over the next few years, we can count on the fact that Italian political parties will propose effective policies to tackle climate change’ and ‘Italian political parties will be unable to propose effective policies to tackle climate change in the coming years’ (trust in politicians’ ability for climate action). A final choice is offered between ‘We have reached a point where governments are unable to take any effective action to prevent or reverse the effects of climate change’ and ‘Environmental policies can be an effective tool in combating climate change’ (effectiveness of climate change policies).
After the treatment, further questions investigate whether people might participate in future climate protests and whether they would support existing environmentalist groups active in Italy on a 1 to 10 scale. The groups included are Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Legambiente, WWF, and Greenpeace. In the political participation section, questions ask how likely people will vote at the next general elections on a scale from 1 to 10 and how likely people are to vote for each of the 9 major Italian parties. Finally, a question asks how important climate change policy is when deciding what party to vote for (Not at all / a little / moderately / a lot / a great deal).