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Open research questions in Climate Change Communication and Perception

369 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 3,682 Climate Change Communication and Perception papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • The paper identifies the challenge of addressing the climate crisis as a complex and multifaceted issue. It highlights the difficulty of balancing the need for immediate action with the need for long-term transformative change. The study emphasizes the challenge of navigating the intersections of climate change, colonialism, and capitalism.

    “How Do You Fight A System That You Live In?”: Youth Climate Activists’ Experiences of Burnout, Grief, and Calls for Transformation · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in understanding how youth climate activists' emotions and lived experiences shape their visions of the future and movements. It highlights the need for more research on the psychological impacts of the climate crisis on youth. The study emphasizes the importance of considering the intersections of climate change, colonialism, and capitalism.

    “How Do You Fight A System That You Live In?”: Youth Climate Activists’ Experiences of Burnout, Grief, and Calls for Transformation · 2026 · DOI

  • The gap between intentions and actual behaviors in addressing climate change. The lack of understanding of adolescents' climate agency modes and their determinants. The need for research on how to develop adolescents' agent role toward climate change.

    Unveiling adolescents’ climate agency modes and their personal, behavioral, and environmental determinants: a qualitative study · 2026 · DOI

  • Considering that individual actions alone are insufficient to address global issues such as CC (Bandura and Cherry, 2020; Koskela and Paloniemi, 2023), it is noteworthy that there was lim- ited evidence that participants expanded their influence through collective or proxy actions.

    Unveiling adolescents’ climate agency modes and their personal, behavioral, and environmental determinants: a qualitative study · 2026 · DOI

  • The study had a limited sample size of 464 participants, - The study only included an American sample, - The study did not control for all potential confounding variables

    Affective integration in climate change communication: recency effects and negativity bias in responses to climate picture sequences · 2026 · DOI

  • Further, the experiment did not employ a fully orthogonal design. While the consequence images included both positively and negatively valenced content, the pro-environmental action images were consistently slightly positive in valence. This design allowed us to explore the inherent affective tone typically associated with action imagery, enhancing ecological validity and facilitating transferability to climate change communication. Consequently, we cannot determine whether the observed differences were driven by image type, emotional valence, or a combination of limitation should address by orthogonalizing image type and valence, for example by norming a broader range of climate-related images to identify both positively and negatively valenced examples within each image category, or by manipulating valence through affective conditioning, such as pairing images with emotionally evocative sounds. This would allow for a clearer interpretation of whether observed effects are driven by image type, emotional valence, or their interaction. the two. Future studies this Another factor that may influence affective and behavioral responses is the coherence between images in a sequence. Clear causal storytelling, such as renewable energy reducing wildfire risk and leading to a healthy forest, may be more persuasive than less coherent sequences (Jones and Peterson, n.d.). Although future research should explore not examined in this study, whether such coherence moderates emotional responses and pro- environmental intentions. A limitation of the study is the relatively small number of trials (12), which may constrain the reliability of trial-specific ratings. However, the emergence of theoretically expected patterns, such as a recency effect and an effect of order on valence ratings, as well as successful prediction of affective responses by the computational model, suggests that the affective data captured meaningful variation and were adequate for testing our hypotheses. A key limitation of this study is the absence of an objective behavioral measure. Environmental psychology has been criticized for its lack of empirical evidence on actual behavior (Nielsen et al., 2024). Future studies should aim to assess the complete chain of antecedents leading to behavior. However, as an initial study, we view this as proof of concept.

    Affective integration in climate change communication: recency effects and negativity bias in responses to climate picture sequences · 2026 · DOI

  • A substantial part of the initial participants was excluded due to incomplete questionnaires or not meeting the pre-selection criteria, - The sample size was limited to 179 participants, - The study only investigated the easiness effect in the context of video abstracts

    A new dimension of simplified science communication: the easiness effect of science popularization in animated video abstracts · 2025 · DOI

  • Investigating the easiness effect in other formats, such as text-based abstracts or podcasts, - Examining the impact of debiasing videos on the easiness effect in different contexts

    A new dimension of simplified science communication: the easiness effect of science popularization in animated video abstracts · 2025 · DOI

  • the survey was conducted using a cross-sectional design, - the sample size is 1,000, - the survey was limited to U.S. residents over 18 years of age

    Taking the temperature of the United States public regarding microbiome engineering · 2024 · DOI

  • There is a lack of understanding of public opinions on microbiome engineering in the built environment. The paper identifies a gap in the literature on the factors that influence public sentiment on microbiome engineering. The study reveals that nearly half of respondents remain uncertain about the technology's benefits and risks.

    Taking the temperature of the United States public regarding microbiome engineering · 2024 · DOI

  • Investigating the effects of CCA on actual behaviors, - Examining the role of other emotions, such as eco-anger, in shaping intentions to engage in climate action, - Replicating the study with a more diverse sample

    Climate change anxiety, fear, and intention to act · 2024 · DOI

  • The paper identifies the challenge of addressing the foundational social and environmental factors that trigger ecological emotions. The study highlights the challenge of overcoming the limitations of Western anthropocentrism's human-to-human interaction approach. The paper argues that a collective engagement approach is needed to effectively manage ecological emotions, which is a challenge in itself.

    From individual resilience to collective response: reframing ecological emotions as catalysts for holistic environmental engagement · 2024 · DOI

  • Thorough research is needed to shift the nonclinical intervention approach from merely promoting individual resilience to encouraging collective engagement. Research should focus on the impact of ecological emotions on mental health, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach. Studies should explore the effects of ecological emotions on vulnerable populations.

    From individual resilience to collective response: reframing ecological emotions as catalysts for holistic environmental engagement · 2024 · DOI

  • The gap between intentions and behaviors in response to climate change is not well understood. The relationship between climate change anxiety and climate change-related fear is not clearly understood. The effects of different message framings on emotional responses and intentions to act are not well studied.

    Climate change anxiety, fear, and intention to act · 2024 · DOI

  • Also, few studies have explored preferences across individuals with different political orientations, levels of trust, and attitudes to climate action.

    People or Experts? A Study on Public Preferences for Participatory Democracy and Expert Governance in the Context of Climate Policymaking in Sweden · 2026 · DOI

  • Although protection motivation theory (PMT) explains threat and coping appraisal, its application to eco-anxiety remains underexplored.

    Regulating eco-anxiety among university students in climate-vulnerable contexts: a PMT–COR integrated coping framework · 2026 · DOI

  • Nevertheless, a clear understanding of the effectiveness of the existing LPs for CCA is still lacking, as well as an analysis of the elements that would make such LPs truly effective is missing.

    Learning platforms for climate change adaptation: the importance of effective communication · 2025 · DOI

  • With many studies in charity appeals on how to better design the message, limited research was conducted regarding messaging strategies on social media.

    Crafting the messages for environmental NGOs: how narrative medium and mode shape different engagement levels · 2025 · DOI

  • However, limited research has examined the discursive strategies and underlying ideologies employed by Western media in reporting on China’s role in climate change.

    Representing the other: a critical discourse analysis of British media coverage of China’s role in climate change · 2025 · DOI

  • Future research should explore these relationships longitudinally and include more diverse samples to enhance the generalizability of the findings.

    Examining the relationships between eco-anxiety, sociodemographic factors, experience of climate events, pro-environmental behaviours, and life satisfaction in young adults · 2025 · DOI

  • Even though a scientific consensus has been building for many decades that the climate emergency is real, and despite many protests and conferences demanding action, global climate solutions remain elusive.

    Imagining Global Climate Solutions: Reflections on The Ministry for the Future and Eleutheria · 2024 · DOI

  • BACKGROUND: The current understanding of climate anxiety among adolescents is sparse.

    Adolescents’ impairment due to climate anxiety is associated with self-efficacy and behavioral engagement: a cross-sectional analysis in Quebec (Canada) · 2024 · DOI

  • However, the current understanding of this functional impairment is limited by the use of suboptimal measures.

    Climate worry: associations with functional impairment, pro-environmental behaviors and perceived need for support · 2024 · DOI

  • Yet, little is known about public perceptions of microorganisms and microbiomes, making it difficult to develop tailored messaging.

    Examination of public perceptions of microbes and microbiomes in the United States reveals insights for science communication · 2024 · DOI

  • The study only interviewed 28 scientists. The data collection was limited to a specific time period. The study did not explore the impact of uncertainties on specific audiences.

    The “bread and butter” of science: understanding how scientists communicate uncertainties · 2026 · DOI

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369 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 3,682 Climate Change Communication and Perception papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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