ABSTRACT: While academic engagement with climate fiction—sometimes called “cli-fi”—remains active, limited qualitative research exists on real reader experiences with this type of literature. In this study, thirty-one interviews with readers of climate fiction were conducted and analyzed qualitatively with thematic analysis. The results consist of six themes representing readers’ self-reported experiences of the impact of reading climate fiction and demonstrate how climate fiction works predominantly as a reinforcement of pre-existing attitudes and emotions related to the threat of climate change. Claims common in theoretical literature underlining climate fiction’s potential in making the readers reflect upon the complexity of climate change did not receive empirical support. Reading and discussing climate fiction emerged as a powerful tool to address one’s personal thoughts and feelings about climate change, while linear assumptions about its “impact” on people’s climate change attitudes and knowledge seem overstated.
Heidi Toivonen (2026) studied this question.