Interpersonal Communication Environments and Counterarguing Intentions Toward Climate Misinformation: The Role of Personal Climate Discussion Networks, Norms, and Attitudes

How everyday social environments shape behavioral responses to environmental information remains a core question in environment–behavior research. This study examines how interpersonal communication environments influence individuals’ intentions to counterargue environmental misinformation. Drawing on Social Capital Theory and the Reasoned Action Approach, we conceptualize personal climate discussion networks as routine social environments that structure subjective norms and attitudes, which in turn motivate behaviorally oriented responses. Using an online survey of 525 U.S. adults exposed to three climate misinformation memes, we estimated structural equation models with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Communication frequency within personal discussion networks consistently predicted stronger pro-climate subjective norms and attitudes, which robustly predicted counterarguing intentions across stimuli. In contrast, perceived credibility neither directly predicted counterarguing intentions nor mediated the relationships between subjective norms or attitudes and counterarguing intentions. These findings suggest that corrective responses to environmental misinformation are driven less by individual-level cognitive evaluation and more by socially structured interpersonal environments that activate norms and attitudes.