The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States

Abstract

Climate change is a critical global challenge that requires immediate action (IPCC, 2019). The fields of social and environmental psychology have made significant contributions to understanding how people think, feel, and act on climate change (Fielding et al., 2014;van der Linden, 2015). Research has identified key psychological barriers to climate action (Gifford, 2011), and the determinants of individuals' intentions to take action to mitigate climate change (Lubell et al., 2007;Roser-Renouf et al., 2014. For example, social factors such as social consensus among friends and family about anthropogenic

Coaching for a Sustainability Transition: Empowering Student-Led Sustainability Initiatives by Developing Skills, Group Identification, and Efficacy Beliefs

“…The division within the activism subtype aligns with former studies that distinguished between organizing and participative action (Alisat and Riemer, 2015), campaign and protest action (Amna, 2012), and institutionalized and non-institutionalized action (Van Stekelenburg et al, 2016). Yet, some authors doubt if such a differentiation is sensible as both protesting and volunteering can be viewed as collective action (see Kende, 2016;Van Zomeren, 2016;Thomas et al, 2017;Sabherwal et al, 2021). In this study, we have the opportunity to test if such a distinction has incremental value.…”

“…Though environmental protesting and volunteering seem to be best predicted by collective efficacy (Rees and Bamberg, 2014;Thomas and Louis, 2014;Besta et al, 2017;Sabherwal et al, 2021; for a meta-analysis beyond the environmental context, see Van Zomeren et al, 2008), self-efficacy is also a fairly good predictor (Brunsting and Postmes, 2002;Lee et al, 2014;Doherty and Webler, 2016). Recent studies found results favoring participative efficacy over collective efficacy as a predictor of protesting and volunteering (e.g., participation in transition town meetings), especially for participants who identified strongly with the cause (Bamberg et al, 2015;van Zomeren et al, 2019;Hamann and Reese, 2020).…”

“…Like Almers (2013), Drury and Reicher (2009) consider creating a vision of a better world a crucial efficacy predictor. Envisioning might be particularly facilitated if confronted with inspiring personalities like Greta Thunberg (Sabherwal et al, 2021). Developing a vision of sustainability solutions is also a critical function of niches in the multilevel perspective (Geels, 2011).…”

“…For sustainability volunteers as a niche group, efficacy beliefs (here, participative efficacy) predict collective action similar to SIMCA and SIMPEA. Group identification influences volunteering and protesting via efficacy affect and efficacy beliefs, suggesting that mediation paths for volunteers differ amongst newly founded groups, protesters, and laypeople [see EMSICA model by Thomas et al (2012), Bongiorno et al (2016, Landmann andRohmann (2020), andSabherwal et al (2021)]. Action skills and having a vision emerge as predictors, both of which might be connected to appraisals and moralization (see Fritsche et al, 2018).…”

COP and the Cloth: Quantitatively and Normatively Assessing Religious NGO Participation at the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

“…Thunberg may be quite effective at motivating the public [40], but governments at the COP seem to be immune to the "Greta Effect" that inspires others to action. The prevailing sentiment of nations at the COP may be best embodied by the so-called "anti-Greta"-Naomi Seibt, the German teenager working for the Heartland Institute, a U.S.-based libertarian think tank notorious for climate denialism-who has described the thinking of those like Thunberg as "despicably anti-human" [41].…”