2022
By Marijn Meijers, Jeroen Lemmens, and Hanneke Hendriks
Climate change is posing an increasing threat to nature, animal species, and humans. To combat climate change, individuals play an important role by behaving climate friendly and by engaging in interpersonal communication regarding climate change in order to create support for societal and governmental changes. Research so far mostly focuses on stimulating climate friendly behavior, whereas stimulating interpersonal climate change communication is so far largely overlooked. The question, therefore, is: How can we stimulate people to talk about climate change? We investigate whether a Virtual Reality experience regarding climate change stimulates interpersonal climate change communication. Furthermore, we look into the role of emotions and arousal as underlying mechanisms.