Do past-focused environmental messages promote pro-environmentalism to conservatives? A pre-registered replication

Abstract

Abstract How can we alleviate the political divide on environmental issues such as climate change? Baldwin and Lammers (2016, Study 1) found that an environmental message with a past temporal focus attenuated the negative association between participants’ conservatism and their pro-environmental attitudes, compared with a future-focused environmental message. To confirm the temporal comparison effect on conservatives’ environmentalism, we directly replicated Baldwin and Lammers (2016, Study 1) in two pre-registered and high-powered studies (Study 1: 538 US adults, 55% female, 98.6% of statistical power; Study 2: 541 US adults, 51% female, 98.8% of statistical power). Results from both studies failed to replicate the temporal comparison effect: The past-focused environmental message was ineffective in promoting pro-environmental outcomes to more conservative people. Meta-analytic and Bayesian analyses on the integrated data of the original and replication studies corroborated the failed replication. This research highlights the importance of direct replications and emphasises the need for further work on overcoming the political divide on environmental problems.