Reply to Loh and Ren: Motivating action among climate change believers

A majority of people in the United States (73%) and globally (86%) believe that climate change is happening ( 1 , 2 ), yet many are not acting on their beliefs ( 3 ).On a broad scale, mobilizing people who already believe in climate change is an important tactic and may be more effective than changing the minds of the minority [~14%, ( 1 )] who deny climate change ( 4 ).Our intervention tournament identified several effective strategies to motivate action and information sharing among the majority of people who believe in climate change ( 5 ).In their commentary ( 6 ), Loh and Ren advocate for considering selection bias before scaling interventions to reach broader audiences, and specifically note the possibility of backfire effects for climate change deniers.* We appreciate the suggestion to investigate potential moderators and strategies to tailor interventions to different demographic groups.We share these goals and provide publicly available data to support exploration and follow-up studies.We agree that checking for backfire effects is important before scaling interventions.In new exploratory analyses, we removed exclusion criteria related to belief in climate change and tested political ideology and belief as potential moderators.We found no evidence of backfire effects and no significant interactions with political ideology or belief ( Fig. 1 and Table 1 ) ( 8 ).However, as relatively few participants denied climate change or reported very conservative ideology, additional samples would strengthen evidence.In recent follow-up studies, we have replicated effects of some interventions-without observing backfire-in nationally representative samples that were stratified by political ideology and included climate change deniers.Nonetheless, as stated in our paper, we agree that "an important goal for future research is to identify strategies that are effective for individuals who hold doubtful or dismissive beliefs related to climate change" ( 5 ).We are also aligned with the goal of tailoring intervention strategies to relevant subpopulations.For example, Loh and Ren's reanalysis is related to literature on addressing disparities in health communication across socioeconomic status (SES) and a broader need for message tailoring and targeting for relevant audiences ( 9 ).Beyond the present study, we agree that it is important to recruit representative samples, explore strategies to overcome political partisanship, and investigate how interventions can be tailored to different audiences.In ongoing work, we are also exploring how other factors, particularly SES and age, moderate intervention effectiveness.A tournament