Exploring the essential psychological factors in fostering hope concerning climate change

Abstract

Hope is an important component that helps engage people in solving problems. Environmental educational resources addressing climate change effectively should ideally nurture hope as well as increase understanding about the issue. However, hopefulness about resolving climate change challenges is a relatively new construct in the literature and little is known about it. To understand the factors that affect hope, we assessed hope using the reasonable person model and hypothesized that students are more likely to be hopeful and work toward solutions if they: (1) are able to make sense of information (model building); (2) perceive there are actions they can take (meaningful action); and (3) believe that society and laypeople have the ability to undertake actions to make a difference (being effective). We surveyed 728 high school students between September 2013 and January 2014 and found that students’ belief of competency (being effective) is a significant and direct path to hope.