The Emergency of Climate Change: Why Are We Failing to Take Action?
Abstract
Latane and Darley developed a five-stage model to understand why people do and do not help other people in emergency situations. We extend their five-stage model to explore why people do and do not take action against climate change. We identify the factors that make climate change difficult to notice and ambiguous as an emergency; we explore barriers to taking responsibility for action; and we discuss the issues of efficacy and costs versus benefits that make action unlikely. The resulting analysis is useful on two levels. For educators and policy makers, the model suggests the most efficacious approaches to galvanizing action among U.S. citizens. For social scientists, the model provides a valuable framework for integrating research from diverse areas of psychology and suggests fruitful avenues for future empirical research.
Repository Citation
Frantz, Cynthia M., and F. Stephan Mayer. 2007. "The Emergency of Climate Change: Why Are We Failing to Take Action?" White paper distributed to the Presidential Committee on Climate Change.
Publication Date
1-1-2007
Department
Psychology
Additional Department
Environmental Studies
Document Type
Other
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-2415.2009.01180.x
Language
English
Format
text
