One Day When We Were Young: Nostalgia Brings Climate Change Temporally Closer

ABSTRACT

The perceived temporal distance of climate change impacts has been considered a long-standing barrier to climate engagement. Because nostalgia has distinct cognitive properties related to temporal thinking, three experimental studies are conducted to investigate nostalgia's potential for shortening temporal distance. Study 1 shows that nostalgia increases climate engagement by reducing temporal distance. Study 2 further identifies vivid imagery as a mechanism for the nostalgia effects across US and Chinese samples. Study 3 shows that nostalgic public service announcements increase climate engagement more than non-nostalgic ones. This study provides strong evidence that evoking nostalgia can be a useful climate change communication strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• nostalgia
• temporal distance
• risk perception
• behavior intention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Guangdong Province in China [grant number GD22XXW07].