Understanding misperceptions of climate actions amongst climate-concerned individuals

Despite growing concern about climate change, current action remains insufficient to keep global warming below 1.5°C. Psychological research finds that publics often overestimate the effectiveness of low-impact individual climate actions (e.g., recycling) and underestimate high-impact behaviours (e.g., flying less). However, the prevalence of these misjudgements among climate-concerned individuals and their connection to behaviour remain unclear. Developing this understanding is crucial, as such misperceptions could cause motivated individuals to prioritize low-impact climate actions over high-impact behaviours, limiting societal potential to mitigate climate change. Using one study in the UK (N = 294) and two studies in the USA (N = 790 and N = 406), we find that even climate-concerned individuals systematically overestimate the impacts of low-impact actions and underestimate high-impact actions, with consistently moderate to large effect sizes across all behaviours examined. We also find an association between perceived impact of climate actions and behavioural engagement, suggesting that such misperceptions hinder efforts to reduce climate change. We explore several explanations for these misperceptions. We find that most of the dominant causes proposed in the literature do not explain participants’ misperceptions of impact. We do, however, find some evidence suggesting that misinformation about specific behaviours, false conceptualisations of the causes of climate change, familiarity with pro-climate behaviours, and the perception that climate action is driven by self-serving intentions are related to misperceptions of the impacts of climate actions among those most concerned about climate change.