Underestimation of personal carbon footprint inequality in four diverse countries.

Extensive research highlights global and within-country inequality in personal carbon footprints. However, the extent to which people are aware of these inequalities remains unclear. Here we use an online survey distributed across four diverse countries: Denmark, India, Nigeria and the USA, to show widespread underestimation of carbon footprint inequality, irrespective of participants' country and income segment.

The energy crisis differentially impacted Swiss and German citizens' energy literacy and efficiency preferences but not their support for climate policies.

The energy crisis reshaped energy politics, resulted in energy price surges, increased energy capacity, and large-scale energy-saving campaigns. While an energy demand reduction was observed in Europe, little is known about how the crisis impacted citizens' climate-relevant judgment and decisions. Here we report a preregistered two-wave cross-national study ( = 1040) spanning the winter of 2022/2023 to investigate how support for renewable energy policies, energy literacy, and energy-efficient product choices developed as this crisis unfolded.

Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries.

Decades after the scientific debate about the anthropogenic causes of climate change was settled, climate disinformation still challenges the scientific evidence in public discourse. Here we present a comprehensive theoretical framework of (anti)science belief formation and updating to account for the psychological factors that influence the acceptance or rejection of scientific messages. We experimentally investigated, across 12 countries (N = 6,816), the effectiveness of six inoculation strategies targeting these factors-scientific consensus, trust in scientists, transparent communication, moralization of climate action, accuracy and positive emotions-to fight real-world disinformation about climate science and mitigation actions.

Co-adoption pathways toward a low-carbon energy system.

Low-carbon technology adoption is an essential element of energy transitions toward net-zero emissions around the world. To exploit the full potential of low-carbon technologies, households should ideally co-adopt multiple low-carbon technologies. Whereas previous research primarily investigated predictors of single-technology adoption in isolation, here we focus on the co-adoption of multiple low-carbon technologies, including solar photovoltaics, stationary batteries, heat pumps, and electric vehicles, to examine the interconnections between adoption decisions and the potential of certain technologies to serve as "entry points" for the co-adoption of multiple low-carbon technologies.

From values to emotions: Cognitive appraisal mediates the impact of core values on emotional experience.

Emotions and values are fundamentally connected. They both are psychological markers of subjective relevance and are thought to be deeply functionally intertwined: According to appraisal theories of emotion, emotions arise when value concerns are at stake; according to theories of value, a value that is threatened or supported gets infused with feelings. Surprisingly, while these assumptions are considered well established by researchers in the respective domains, up to now, empirical research has not provided much evidence supporting a link between values and emotions.

The effectiveness of nudging: A meta-analysis of choice architecture interventions across behavioral domains.

Over the past decade, choice architecture interventions or so-called nudges have received widespread attention from both researchers and policy makers. Built on insights from the behavioral sciences, this class of behavioral interventions focuses on the design of choice environments that facilitate personally and socially desirable decisions without restricting people in their freedom of choice. Drawing on more than 200 studies reporting over 450 effect sizes ( = 2,149,683), we present a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of choice architecture interventions across techniques, behavioral domains, and contextual study characteristics.

Validity of energy social research during and after COVID-19: challenges, considerations, and responses.

Measures to control the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are having unprecedented impacts on people's lives around the world. In this paper, we argue that those conducting social research in the energy domain should give special consideration to the internal and external validity of their work conducted during this pandemic period. We set out a number of principles that researchers can consider to give themselves and research users greater confidence that findings and recommendations will still be applicable in years to come.

The power of putting a label on it: green labels weigh heavier than contradicting product information for consumers' purchase decisions and post-purchase behavior.

Green products are appealing. Thus, labeling products as environmentally friendly is an effective strategy to increase sales. However, the labels often promise more than the products can actually deliver.

The impact of rear-view mirror distance and curvature on judgements relevant to road safety.

Unlabelled: We report two experiments that investigate the impact of rear-view mirror distance and curvature on distance, spacing, and time-to-contact (TTC) judgements. The variation in mirror distance had a significant effect on TTC judgements, but only marginally influenced distance and spacing estimations. As mirror distance increased, TTC was overestimated, which is potentially dangerous.