Communicating complex climate dynamics with the En-ROADS simulator: Comparing graph-based and animated environments for learning, metacognition, and motivation

Understanding climate change requires reasoning about feedbacks, delays, and nonlinear dynamics—hallmarks of complex systems. Interactive policy simulators such as En-ROADS are increasingly used in educational and public settings to support this form of system-dynamics reasoning. A common design assumption is that augmenting such simulators with animated or immersive environmental visualizations may enhance learning, metacognition, or motivation to act. However, empirical evidence for this assumption remains limited. In a randomized, fully preregistered study, N = 135 participants from the general population of Tübingen interacted with the En-ROADS climate simulator; one group viewed the standard graph-based interface, while the other group additionally viewed an animated environmental visualization. Outcomes included climate knowledge, procedural accuracy in application tasks, interaction behavior, metacognitive insight into knowledge and knowledge gaps, and willingness to act. Across all outcomes, the animated environment did not yield significant benefits beyond the graph-based environment. These findings provide no empirical evidence for the notion that increasing representational realism through animated environments could improve learning, metacognition, or willingness to act within interactive system-dynamics simulators. Instead, the present results indicate that greater perceptual realism is not mandatory for improving comprehension of complex climate change through climate simulators.