Identifying the Active Ingredients of Climate Change Narratives: A Model of Temporal Perspective, Narrator Perspective, and Psychological Distance

Abstract

Psychological distance has long been regarded as a primary obstacle to driving pro-environmental changes. This study seeks to explore narrative attributes that can be strategically harnessed to solve the distal nature of climate change. By adopting a 2 (retrospective vs. prospective temporal perspective) × 2 (first-person vs. third-person narrator perspective) factorial experimental design, the findings suggested that climate change narratives in retrospective and first-person perspectives manifest superiority in reducing psychological distance, with narrative involvement as the explanatory mechanism. In addition, the two forms of narrative involvement, namely transportation and identification, play distinct roles in addressing various types of psychological distance.