Resource Type: Research & Articles

As Trump began rolling back environmental regulations earlier this year, a group of former EPA staffers (Save EPA) developed a Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda,  to help the general public effectively resist the Trump agenda by engaging in the federal and state rulemaking process. Inspired by the Indivisible Guide, this resource explains how regulations are made and offers advice on how to use the public comment process to make your voice heard. In this week’s alert, we cover the research on how these guides and other tools for action promote a sense of efficacy—empowerment—and lead individuals to take action on climate

This response to Dan Kahan’s critique of the author’s initial study provides data from a replication study using a larger sample to demonstrate that a consensus message can indeed directly cause changes, not only in estimated scientific consensus, but also in belief that climate change is happening and human-caused, worry about climate change, and support for action. 

Much research finds that “scientific consensus messaging,” or informing people that 97% of scientists believe climate change is happening and human-caused, can change people’s minds. A landmark study in 2015 by Sander van der Linden and colleagues reports that people who heard this message believed there was a stronger scientific consensus climate change, compared to a control group who heard no message, and that this was a “gateway” belief that then caused other beliefs to change (Gateway Belief Model). However, Kahan takes another look at the data from that study and argues that this claim should be tempered. Sander van der Linden and colleagues have responded to this critique.

This article offers empirical evidence supporting a relationship between social influence and voter turnout by comparing the effectiveness of face-to-face get-out-the-vote visits by canvassers living in a voter’s local neighborhood against visits by canvassers from other neighborhoods. This study, published in 2013, looked at canvassing in Los Angeles in 2006 and attempted to discern a difference between canvassers local to the neighborhood in which they were working and those working outside where they lived. In addition, this study confirmed that low-propensity voters can be turned out to vote based on a face-to-face conversation.