Two-thirds of Americans play video games, and there is a stereotype of video gamers as disengaged from reality - maybe, the problem of climate change. Is it true? No! Based on nationally representative survey, we find that video gamer is a worthwhile potential audience for future climate change communication.

This research is part of Yale Program on Climate Change Communication's longitudinal research about climate change in the American mind. This research project is also a collaboration with Unity (game engine). 

Publications

Our peer-reviewed article in Climatic Change suggests video gamers as an important audience for climate change communication. In Study 1, a nationally representative survey in the United States (N = 1,006), we found that being a video gamer was slightly positively associated with intentions to take collective action on global warming. In Study 2, restricted to gamers in the United States (N = 2,034), we found that having more friends and family who played video games, and/or being exposed to global warming content in gaming, were also positively associated with collective action intentions. These findings were consistent even after controlling for potential confounding variables such as age, political party, and global warming attitudes.