The Effect of Climate Fresk on Environmental Knowledge, Intentions, and Behaviors: Field Evidence from an International Company.

Last registered on October 27, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Effect of Climate Fresk on Environmental Knowledge, Intentions, and Behaviors: Field Evidence from an International Company.
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0016582
Initial registration date
October 23, 2025

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
October 27, 2025, 6:43 AM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Lisa Salvetti
Affiliation
Univeristy of Montpellier
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Simon Briole
PI Affiliation
CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier
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PI Name
Rustam Romaniuc
PI Affiliation
MBS - Montpellier Business School
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PI Name
Lisette Ibanez
PI Affiliation
CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier
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PI Name
Sébastien Roussel
PI Affiliation
CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier
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PI Name
Dimitri Dubois
PI Affiliation
CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier
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PI Name
Marion Davin
PI Affiliation
AMSE - Aix-Marseille School of Economics
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2025-07-01
End date
2026-08-31
Keywords
Behavior, Education, Environment & Energy
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study investigates the causal impact of the Climate Fresk, a participatory climate awareness workshop, on employees’ environmental engagement in a corporate setting. We implement a randomized controlled trial (RCT) within an international industrial company operating in 80 countries with over 161,000 employees, randomly assigning participants to earlier or later workshop sessions.
We measure changes in climate-related knowledge, beliefs and intentions to engage in sustainable actions, as well as support for climate policies, and actual pro-environmental effort through the WEPT, a task where employees can contribute their effort to an environmental cause. The gradual rollout of the workshop allows us to capture both immediate impacts and their persistence over several weeks.
We hypothesize that participation in the workshop strengthens climate-related beliefs, intentions, and observed pro-environmental behaviors, with effects that endure beyond the short term. By combining a rigorous experimental design with measures of both stated intentions and incentivized behavior, this study provides evidence on how short, interactive interventions can shape decision-making and pro-environmental action in organizational contexts, contributing to research in behavioral economics and climate education.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Briole, Simon et al. 2025. "The Effect of Climate Fresk on Environmental Knowledge, Intentions, and Behaviors: Field Evidence from an International Company. ." AEA RCT Registry. October 27. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16582-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2025-07-01
Intervention End Date
2025-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Climate Change-related beliefs; behavioral intentions; perceived efficacy of actions; support for climate policies; observed pro-environmental behavior.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

• Climate Change Beliefs (Scale 0-100)
Belief that climate change is real
Belief in its anthropogenic cause
Perceived necessity of action
Perceived severity
Sense of urgency
Perceived personal impact

• Perceived Efficacy of Actions (Likert 1-5)
14 Actions (individual and collective)

• Behavioral Intentions (Scale 0-100)
14 Actions (individual and collective)
• Willingness to adopt individual sustainable behaviors in the future (Transport, Food, Consumption, Waste, Energy)
• Willingness to engage in civic actions (Donations, Protests…)
→ Primary outcome: index of behavioral intentions, split by type
→ Secondary outcomes: item-level intentions for each specific behavior

• Actual Behavior
• Number of optional tasks completed voluntarily during the session
• Time spent on task(s)
• Total environmental donation generated
→ Primary outcome: index combining the number of tasks completed, time spent on task(s), and total donation, using standardized scores following Anderson (2008).
→ Secondary outcomes: the three components, separately

• Policy Support (0-100)
Support for 10 public climate policies
→ Primary outcome: Index of policy support
→ Sub-indices by policy type: taxation, infrastructure, regulation, food system

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Durability of effects; evaluation of the workshop; heterogeneous effects by socio-demographic variables;
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
• Durability of effects
Evaluated based on the timing of participation in the Fresque du Climat workshops

• Evaluation of the Workshop (treatment group only)
• Satisfaction
• Perception of facilitator (knowledge, management, benevolence)
→ Descriptive outcomes: will be used for monitoring and exploratory analyses

• Socio-demographics
Sex
Age
Job position
Living area (urban/rural)
Number of family members
→ Descriptive outcomes: will be used for monitoring and exploratory analyses

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The study is embedded in Saint-Gobain’s internal campaign to raise the environmental awareness of a large share of its employees by the end of 2025 and, ultimately, change their behaviors. We will begin with 3–4 French sites, each with approximately 70 employees, and will potentially expand to other sites nationally or internationally.
All employees at selected sites are invited to participate in the Climate Fresk workshop. However, the timing of participation is randomized, allowing for causal inference: employees assigned to the treatment group attend the workshop earlier, while those in the control group have not yet participated at the time of the main survey administration.
Data collection will involve two survey waves administered via oTree, with links sent directly to the business units. The main survey will take place approximately three months into the rollout, at which point a roughly equal number of employees will have been treated and untreated, allowing for clean comparisons.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Participants are randomly assigned by the company’s internal HR team to different workshop slots. Randomization is conducted at the individual level within each site, ensuring that all employees have an equal probability of being allocated to an earlier (treatment) or later (control) workshop. Assignment is carried out using the company’s scheduling software.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
N/A (individual-level randomization)
Sample size: planned number of observations
210–280 employees across 3–4 company sites
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Approximately half of the employees in each site will attend the workshop earlier (treatment) and the other half later (control), staggered over 3 months.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Comité d’Éthique de la Recherche de l’Université de Montpellier
IRB Approval Date
2025-07-01
IRB Approval Number
UM 2025-073
Analysis Plan

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