Breath, Love, Walk? The Impact of Mindfulness Interventions on Climate Policy Support and Environmental Attitudes

Abstract

Mindfulness practices have the potential to induce the cognitive and behavioral changes needed to foster pro-environmental behavior and increase support toward sustainable and climate-oriented policies. However, the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of meditation on sustainable behavior is limited and mostly confined to correlational studies, often based on the same type of mindfulness interventions. In this paper, we report the results of an online experiment (n = 1000) comparing the impact of three different short-term mindfulness interventions on various (self-reported and incentivized) measures of mindfulness state and sustainable behavior. While only one of our interventions is found to impact environmental attitude and climate policy support directly, we show that the three meditation practices indirectly foster sustainable behavior through preidentified mediators. These results are relevant for organizations and policymakers who seek to foster climate policy support and environmental attitudes in their stakeholders.