When are good feelings good for the world? A mixed-methods analysis of targets of hope and issue engagement for climate change and COVID-19 [Author Accepted Manuscript]

Hope may be a key precursor to prosocial engagement, yet hope’s effects on engagement could depend on what people feel hopeful about. In our work, U.S. adults (N = 1898) in mid-2020 wrote what made them hopeful and indicated behavioral intentions and policy support for COVID-19 and climate change. Open-ended responses suggested shared themes of (a) science and technology, (b) powerful actors, (c) lay action, (d) increasing awareness, (e) denial hope (hope grounded in perceiving a problem is overstated), and (f) no hope across both COVID-19 and climate change. Quantitative analyses revealed that those with topic-specific denial hope reported below-average engagement with that topic, while those hopeful about powerful actors, lay action, or increasing awareness for a topic generally reported above-average engagement with that topic. Patterns for science and technology were mixed: those hopeful about this target for COVID-19 were above-average in COVID-19 engagement, yet those hopeful about this target for climate change were below-average in climate behavioral intentions (though not policy support), partially supporting the moral hazard hypothesis (i.e., salient technology-driven solutions undermining other action). Overall, findings support the relevance of understanding what people are hopeful about and provide an initial framework for targets of hope.