Mental representations of climate change

Using structural topic modeling, we identified patterns in how climate change is mentally represented and examined the association between representation content and policy support, behavioral intentions, risk perception, and information avoidance. Results show that emotionally intense, specific representations (e.g., “…a dead forest”) are linked to higher support for environmental policy and higher pro-environmental intention, whereas vague or detached representations (e.g., “…weather has changed…”) are linked to lower support and intentions.