@climatenews

This is interesting. I'd been previously familiar with the popularization of psychological distance and self-efficacy/response-efficacy as key factors in moving from climate awareness to climate action, but good to know that as the article notes focusing on the latter is probably more useful than the former.

While the article wisely warns against using intuition alone to draw conclusions - it does make intuitive sense that focusing on "how can we be effective at creating substantive change", at this point in public knowledge of climate change, is more useful than awareness.

I would also wonder about the difference between psychological distance as far as "this will affect people in other countries" vs "this will affect people in my country" vs "this will affect me, personally". Based on 2021 Yale Climate Opinion Survey data, the difference in commonality between the latter two (64% vs. 47% belief) is greater than that between the first two (68% vs. 64% belief). But of course awareness of personal effects has to be paired with sense of efficacy to avoid paralysis.

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/