Matthew T. Ballew

Yale University | YU · School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Interest in the audience factors that shape the processing of climate change messaging has risen over the past decade, as evidenced by dozens of studies demonstrating message effects that are contingent on audiences’ political values, ideological worldviews, and cultural mindsets. Complementing these efforts is a growing interest in understanding t...

Research indicates that contact with nature elevates positive emotions; however, relatively less work examines the mechanisms responsible for these effects. The present study experimentally tested whether a brief experience in nature promotes specific positive emotions, such as happiness, joy, and feelings of awe because of feeling absorbed and ful...

Previous research documents that U.S. conservatives, and conservative white males in particular, tend to dismiss the threat of climate change more than others in the U.S. public. Other research indicates that higher education and income can each exacerbate the dismissive tendencies of the political Right. Bridging these lines of research, the prese...

Prior research has found that systems thinking, the tendency to perceive phenomena as interconnected and dynamic, is associated with a general proenvironmental orientation. However, less is known about its relationship with public understanding of climate change and/or whether this relationship varies across people with different political views. B...

Despite Greta Thunberg's popularity, research has yet to investigate her impact on the public's willingness to take collective action on climate change. Using cross‐sectional data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N = 1,303), we investigate the “Greta Thunberg Effect,” or whether exposure to Greta Thunberg predicts collective...

Collaborating with climate justice practitioners, we conducted a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (n = 1,011) to measure and explore predictors of Americans’ climate justice beliefs and intentions to engage in related behaviors. We find that only about one-third of Americans have heard of climate justice, but about half of Americans...

Building public consensus about the threat of climate change is critical for enacting meaningful action to address it. To understand how Americans are changing their beliefs about climate change, research typically relies on cross-sectional survey responses. Data that is collected from the same individuals over time– panel data– provides clearer ev...

As climate change impacts increase, communicators must engage as many audiences as possible in climate action. One potentially underrated audience is video gamers. Two-thirds of Americans play video games, and video games are a potentially effective climate change communication tool. However, little research has examined whether video gamers have u...

As climate change impacts increase, communicators must engage as many audiences as possible in climate action. One potentially underrated audience is video gamers. Two-thirds of Americans play video games, and video games are a potentially effective climate change communication tool. However, little research has examined whether video gamers have u...

The segmentation analysis, based on a nationally representative survey of 4,619 Indian adults, identified four unique global warming audiences in India: The Alarmed, the Concerned, the Cautious, and the Disengaged. The majority of the Indian population are Alarmed (54%) – the group most aware and convinced of the reality and danger of global warmin...

Americans increasingly accept that global warming is happening and a serious threat. Using secondary data from national probability surveys of the US adult population and preregistered hypotheses, we explore how and why Americans self-report changing their minds about global warming. Common reasons included learning more about the issue, hearing or...

Adoption of plant-based diets is one of the most impactful ways individuals can reduce carbon emissions, helping to mitigate climate change. People attach different degrees of importance to the attributes of their food, such as taste, environmental impact, and health considerations. Identifying key motivators and barriers to adopting plant-based di...

National polls reveal stark and growing political divisions on the issue of climate change within the United States. However, few studies have explored whether these trends generalize to communities of color, who experience disproportionate environmental risks. Synthesizing over a decade of nationally representative survey data (2008–2019; N = 23,7...

Volunteerism is a unique form of helping behavior that is related to personality traits and characteristics. The Big Five personality traits of agreeableness and extraversion consistently predict volunteerism. In addition, there are a number of dynamic, or changeable, traits and states that reliably predict volunteerism, including: (a) prosocial or...

Volunteerism is a unique form of helping behavior that is related to personality traits and characteristics. The Big Five personality traits of agreeableness and extraversion consistently predict volunteerism. In addition, there are a number of dynamic, or changeable, traits and states that reliably predict volunteerism, including: (a) prosocial or...

Global warming will disproportionately affect people of color (e.g., Latinos). Previous research has found that Latinos in the USA are more engaged with global warming than are non-Latino Whites, in part, because they are more likely to perceive it as a serious risk. It was unclear, however, what factors most strongly explain Latinos’ elevated perc...

Literary works of fiction about climate change are becoming more common and more popular among critics and readers. While much research has indicated the persuasive effectiveness of narrative storytelling in general, empirical research has not yet tested the effects of reading climate fiction. This paper reports results from the first experimental...

Reducing global warming will require enacting strong climate policies, which is unlikely to happen without public support. While prior research has identified varied predictors of climate change policy support, it is unclear which predictors are strongest for the American electorate as a whole, and which predictors are strongest for Democrats and R...

Sharing personal stories of how climate change is already harming people is a promising communication strategy to engage diverse and even skeptical audiences. Using two experiments, we test the effects of a radio story on the climate change beliefs and risk perceptions of political moderates and conservatives. The radio story, which aired on hundre...

Drawing on a nationally representative survey (N = 1,029; including 911 registered voters), this report describes how Democratic, Independent, and Republican registered voters view global warming, climate and energy policies, and personal and collective action. This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Chang...

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: April 7 – 17, 2020....

People often misperceive other people's beliefs about global warming—for instance, underestimating the percentage of people who think global warming is happening. In the U.S., perceptions of others vary across political lines and interact with the extent to which partisans align or deviate from the views of their political ingroup. With an online s...

Americans strongly support policies aimed at increasing the use of renewable energy. Prior research has found that, overall, support for renewable energy tends to be motivated primarily by people's perceptions that it creates economic benefits and reduces environmental harms. However, the extant research has not established how these motivations va...

On April 3 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all Americans wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement came during the fielding of a large, nationally-representative survey (N = 3,933) of Americans' COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, providing an opportunity t...

In this working paper, we used a large national survey of American adults (N = 3,933) to estimate the effect of perceived social norms among friends and family (i.e., how often friends and family perform preventive behaviors, and whether they think it is important for the respondent to do so) on people’s own COVID-19 preventive behaviors. We found...

Drawing on a scientific national survey (N = 3,933; including 3,188 registered voters), this report describes Americans’ risk perceptions and emotional responses to COVID-19 to inform the public health community, policymakers, and the public.

On April 3 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all Americans wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement came during the fielding of a large, nationally-representative survey (N = 3,933) of Americans’ COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, providing an opportunity t...

Drawing on a scientific national survey (N = 3,933; including 3,188 registered voters), this report describes Americans’ coronavirus knowledge, attitudes, vulnerabilities, protective behaviors, and communication needs in an effort to inform the public health community, policymakers, and the public.

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: November 8 – 20, 201...

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: November 8 – 20, 201...

Racial/ethnic minorities and lower-socioeconomic (SES) groups in the U.S. face disproportionate environmental risks, which may hold implications for how these groups construe environmental issues, relative to other segments of the public. We explored this possibility with a diverse sample of 1191 U.S. adults, hypothesizing that, relative to White a...

This paper is a pre-print and is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published. Please do not copy or cite this document without permission. The published article is available at 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.102024

In early 2019, a US climate change and economic renewal policy proposal called the Green New Deal (GND)¹ rose from obscurity to national prominence in just four months. This situation created a natural field experiment in which to study the emergence of partisan polarization. Here, we report findings from two nationally representative surveys of re...

Research on the gateway belief model indicates that communicating the scientific consensus on global warming acts as a "gateway" to other beliefs and support for action. We test whether a video conveying the scientific consensus on global warming is more effective than a text transcript with the same information. Results show that the video was sig...

Ideally, research in the social and behavioral sciences would be conducted using samples that perfectly represent the population of interest. However, it is often not feasible for researchers to collect representative samples, forcing them to rely on convenience samples. While some researchers have found that convenience samples can produce compara...

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: March 29-April 8, 20...

Using two nationally representative surveys (total N = 2,544) and two experiments (total N = 1,620), we investigate a social identity approach to engaging Christians in the issue of climate change. Results show Christian Americans say “protecting God’s creation” is a top reason for wanting to reduce global warming. An exploratory experiment and a p...

The severe threats posed by anthropogenic climate change make hope and a sense of efficacy key ingredients in effective climate communication. Yet little is known about what makes individuals hopeful–or in contrast, doubtful–that humanity can reduce the problem, or how hope relates to activism. This study uses mixed-methods with two national survey...

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: March 29-April 8, 20...

Environmental sustainability, the long-term management and protection of earth’s resources and ecosystems, is increasingly recognized as a societal challenge shaped by human behavior at every level of social interaction, from neighborhoods to nations. Psychological perspectives on conservation, which have traditionally emphasized individual determi...

Recent scholarship finds that communicating descriptive norms, such as the fact that 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human‐caused climate change is happening, is an effective gateway to changing individuals’ beliefs and attitudes about climate change and support for climate policies. Other scholars, however, have offered an alternativ...

Research indicates that Latinos have particularly strong pro-environmental attitudes and support for policies to reduce climate change. This study explores differences in climate change activism (i.e., contacting government officials) between Latino and non-Latino White citizens in the United States, and the individual and social factors that predi...

The present research examines the impact of visiting natural history museums on implicit connectedness with nature among youth. FlexiTwins, a computer-based game version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), was used to measure implicit connectedness with nature among youth visitors to two natural history museums in the Los Angeles area of Southe...

Significance Perceived norms (e.g., beliefs about the consensus views of others) have been shown to predict a broad range of proenvironmental behaviors. We document widespread underestimation of the environmental concerns of a broad range of sociodemographic groups among the US public. This underestimation was largest for judgments of minorities’ a...

Perceiving greater threat from climate change has been shown to positively affect beliefs about humanity’s ability to mitigate the threat. We examined two possible mediators of this paradoxical relationship utilizing data from a large socioeconomically diverse sample of the US adults (n = 1040) collected in 2015. Specifically, we predicted that att...

Research from a variety of disciplines suggests that online technologies (i.e., Web 2.0 and social media) have considerable potential for spurring proenvironmental action; however, relatively little work examines how to effectively capitalize on these communication and organization tools. This review paper describes the Technologies for Proenvironm...