Introduction: Context-specific conspiracy beliefs refer to the conviction that powerful entities are plotting against society, in relation to specific social or political issues. Populist attitudes can be political or contextual.
Purpose: This work investigates conspiracy beliefs, populist attitudes, and policy support within the climate change context. The aim is to examine how exposure to climate change conspiracy theories influences beliefs in such theories, political and context-specific populist attitudes, and pro-environmental policy support, in Italy and Germany. From an applied psychological perspective, understanding the psychological mechanisms linking these constructs is crucial for implementing interventions that promote support for pro-environmental policies.
Method: Study 1 (Italy, N = 332) is a preliminary correlational study and aims to verify the relationships between the belief in climate change conspiracy theories, political and context-specific populist attitudes, and pro-environmental policy support. Study 2a (Italy, N = 223) and Study 2b (Germany, N = 325) are experimental studies and employed a between-subject design at three levels: participants' exposure to anti-scientific content related to climate change - in which the elites are scientists -, vs exposure to scientific evidence, vs control with no exposure. A priori power analysis using G*Power was conducted for Studies 2a and 2b. An online self-report questionnaire was implemented on Qualtrics for each study. Data collections involved a snowball sampling procedure. Data analysis was conducted with SPSS and R.
Results: While the results cannot be generalized, they demonstrate the complex relationship between context-specific conspiracy beliefs, political and contextual populist attitudes, and policy support within the climate change context.
Conclusions: Interventions aimed at counteracting the negative consequences of exposure to conspiracy theories should consider how pro-environmental policies can be influenced in different cultural contexts.