Climate change terminology does not influence willingness to take climate action

Despite widespread concern about climate change, a majority of people are not engaging in climate actions necessary to help decrease the risks posed by the climate emergency. Could the language used to refer to the changing climate make a difference in attempts to mobilize the population into action? The mixed results in the scientific literature prompted an ongoing debate. Across two experiments (Ntotal=6,132, recruited globally in 63 countries in Study 1, and a replication in the US in Study 2), we explored whether climate terminology influenced the extent to which individuals were willing to engage in preventative action. We tested the differential effect of 10 frequently used terms (i.e., “climate change”, “climate crisis”,“global warming”, “global heating”, “climate emergency”, “carbon pollution”, “carbon emissions”, “greenhouse gasses”, “greenhouse effect”, “global boiling”). Despite high willingness to engage in climate action (74% in Study 1 and 57% in Study 2), the terms had no impact. This pattern of results was robust across a wide variety of populations (including age, gender, political ideology, socioeconomic status,education level). Our results suggest that subtle differences in climate change language are not a barrier to climate action, indicating that focusing on subtle terminology in climate messaging is not an effective use of resources.