Promoting collective climate action and identification with environmentalists through social interaction and visual feedback in virtual reality
Adéla Plechatá, Thomas A. Morton, Guido Makransky
Abstract
Social interaction is theorized to be a key mechanism for crystallizing environmental identities, encouraging individual and collective action, and driving societal shifts toward sustainability. This preregistered lab-in-the-field study utilizes multiuser immersive virtual reality (VR), which allows individuals to interact verbally and non-verbally in a shared virtual environment, to investigate these processes in a controlled setting. High school student participants (255 tested, 194 analyzed) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) social interaction with environmental feedback, (2) social interaction only, or (3) no social interaction and no environmental feedback. In dyads, all participants engaged in a virtual sustainable cooking task, working either collaboratively (conditions 1 and 2) or in parallel without interaction (condition 3). Environmental feedback was provided by dynamically visualizing the impact of food choices. Results indicated that social interaction enhanced social identification with climate-action supporters. Environmental feedback, in combination with social interaction, further amplified these effects, leading to higher collective action intentions and feelings of hope. Although social interaction with feedback resulted in higher intentions to reduce meat consumption compared to social interaction only, no direct effects on objectively assessed behavior were observed. Social identification with climate action supporters was significantly correlated with all behavior-related measures. This study demonstrates the utility of multiuser VR as an experimental tool for investigating social interaction and as a practical tool for engaging students in sustainability. Theoretically, the results highlight the importance of interaction in social identification, which can be enhanced through visualization and feedback to promote collective action.