Development and validation of the Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set
Development and validation of the Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set
StatusVoR
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Authors
Zaremba, Dominika
Michałowski, Jarosław
Klöckner, Christian A.
Marchewka, Artur
Wierzba, Małgorzata
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Monograph (alternative title)
Date
2024-04-18
Publisher
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Behavior Research Methods
Issue
4
Volume
56
Pages
Pages
3330–3345
ISSN
1554-3528
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Weblink
Access date
2024-09-11
Abstract PL
Abstract EN
Climate change is widely recognised as an urgent issue, and the number of people concerned about it is increasing. While emotions are among the strongest predictors of behaviour change in the face of climate change, researchers have only recently begun to investigate this topic experimentally. This may be due to the lack of standardised, validated stimuli that would make studying such a topic in experimental settings possible. Here, we introduce a novel Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set. ECCS consists of 180 realistic short stories about climate change, designed to evoke five distinct emotions—anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope—in addition to neutral stories. The stories were created based on qualitative data collected in two independent studies: one conducted among individuals highly concerned about climate change, and another one conducted in the general population. The stories were rated on the scales of valence, arousal, anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope in the course of three independent studies. First, we explored the underlying structure of ratings (Study 1; n = 601). Then we investigated the replicability (Study 2; n = 307) and cross-cultural validity (Study 3; n = 346) of ECCS. The collected ratings were highly consistent across the studies. Furthermore, we found that the level of climate change concern explained the intensity of elicited emotions. The ECCS dataset is available in Polish, Norwegian and English and can be employed for experimental research on climate communication, environmental attitudes, climate action-taking, or mental health and wellbeing.
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Keywords PL
Keywords EN
Climate change
Pro-environmental behaviour
Emotion
Climate emotions
Valence
Arousal
Pro-environmental behaviour
Emotion
Climate emotions
Valence
Arousal
Keywords other
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