Since Chinese households account for more than half of the country’s total carbon emissions, efforts focused on consumption will be key to reaching carbon reduction targets. The Individual Low-carbon Behavior Rewarding System (ILBRS) is an emerging mechanism in China that encourages the public to develop a low-carbon lifestyle and it is critical to look for various approaches to enhance the public’s willingness to participate in it. The framing effect has been widely used to study pro-environmental behavior as a low-cost nudge. We used an online questionnaire (N = 320) to investigate how framing information (loss and gain framing) influenced people’s willingness to participate in the ILBRS through the mediation of environmental risk perception. The results indicated that the public’s willingness to participate in the ILBRS under the loss frame was significantly higher than the gain frame. Furthermore, environmental risk perception played a mediating role in the proceedings. Based on our findings, the designers and promoters of ILBRS systems could employ loss-frame information to promote the public’s willingness to participate in the ILBRS and drive more people to live a low-carbon life in the process of mechanism construction, information communication, and operational promotion.

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The achievement of carbon neutrality has become increasingly important. Therefore, it the use of education to increase public understanding of carbon neutrality and facilitate low-carbon behaviors is urgent. Climate change knowledge is an effective measure to promote people’s interest and enthusiasm for specific educational projects. The present study analyzed the effects of climate change knowledge on adolescents’ attitudes and their willingness to participate in carbon neutrality education and validated the mediating effect of environmental responsibility. The findings showed that climate change knowledge improves adolescents’ attitudes toward carbon neutrality education and that environmental responsibility plays a mediating role in this. The findings provide insightful implications for carbon neutrality related policymaking and education promotion.

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