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People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action

Nature Climate Change volume 16, pages 774–780 (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

Globally, people underestimate others’ support for climate action—a phenomenon frequently described as pluralistic ignorance, which is seen as a major barrier to collective climate engagement. However, little is known about whether pluralistic ignorance occurs regarding actual behaviour, what mechanisms underlie it and whether correcting it changes such behaviours. Here, across five preregistered experiments (N = 5,081), we found that participants overestimated rare actual behaviours such as others’ donating or political engagement for climate action, while we replicated the underestimation of broad public support. Misestimations arise primarily from general cognitive processes when estimating proportions. Finally, correcting these misperceptions partly affected self-reported donation willingness but not actual donations. These findings suggest that pluralistic ignorance in the climate domain may be more intricate and less consequential than previously thought.

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Fig. 1: Pluralistic ignorance in climate willingness and behaviours (Studies 1 and 2).
Fig. 2: Over- and underestimation of policy support (study 1).
Fig. 3: Over- and underestimation of climate action (study 3).
Fig. 4: Effects of norm communication on climate action intentions, willingness and behaviour (studies 1, 4a and 4b).

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Data availability

All preregistrations, materials and data are publicly available at https://osf.io/kcq37 (ref. 33). Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All custom code developed for this study is publicly available at https://osf.io/kcq37 (ref. 33).

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Acknowledgements

This research was partly conducted as part of the Planetary Health Action Survey (PACE), which is a joint project of the University of Erfurt, the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, the University of Bamberg, the Robert Koch Institute, the Federal Center for Health Education, the Leibniz Institute of Psychology and the Science Media Center Germany. We thank L.M. Hempel, M. Geiger, H. Temme and L. Lehrer for insightful discussions and their contributions to the implementation of the studies. We also thank C. Wierscher and A.-M. Lutz for help with data collection and preparation of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation (grant nos. 00.003.2022 and 00.002.2025) and by institutional funds from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine and the University of Erfurt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Planetary Health Behaviour, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany

    Kevin E. Tiede, Kira Maur & Cornelia Betsch

  2. Health Communication Working Group, Implementation Science, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany

    Kevin E. Tiede, Kira Maur & Cornelia Betsch

  3. Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

    Kevin E. Tiede

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  1. Kevin E. Tiede
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  2. Kira Maur
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  3. Cornelia Betsch
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Contributions

K.E.T. conceptualized the research and administered the project. K.E.T., K.M. and C.B. designed the studies, developed the methodology and carried out the investigation. K.E.T. led data curation and formal analyses, with support from K.M. K.E.T. created the visualizations and drafted the original manuscript. C.B. acquired funding. All authors contributed to writing, reviewing and editing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kevin E. Tiede.

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Tiede, K.E., Maur, K. & Betsch, C. People systematically under- and overestimate public engagement in climate action. Nat. Clim. Chang. 16, 774–780 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02668-z

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