Papers
New publication: How climate policy mixes shape electric vehicle adoption from individual decisions to societal change
How do combinations of climate policies influence the transition to electric mobility? In collaboration with Mart van der Kam (Delft University of Technology), Amir Hosein Hadian Rasanan (University of Basel), and Sebastian Gluth (University of Hamburg), Anne and Ulf from our team investigated how a carbon price and climate information work together to influence electric vehicle (EV) adoption.
The study combines behavioural experiments with 1,589 participants from Mexico, South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom with agent-based simulations of long-term EV diffusion. This approach links individual decision-making with system-level dynamics to better understand how policy intervention effects unfold over time in social and technological contexts.
Results show that carbon pricing and climate information had additive effects on individual EV choices, even though the two policies competed for attention during decision-making. However, when simulating long-term adoption dynamics using agent-based modelling, the combined effects varied depending on the country and the stage of the transition, ranging from additive to synergistic or sub-additive outcomes.
The study also shows that combining a carbon price with climate information increases public support for climate policy. When the simulations accounted for the fact that public support and policy implementation influence one another, higher public support contributed to more sustained policy implementation and, in turn, higher long-term EV adoption.
The findings highlight that understanding individual behaviour is essential but not sufficient to understand societal change. Effective climate policy requires considering individual behaviour within the dynamic social, technological, and policy context in which it unfolds.
Publication
Günther, A., van der Kam, M., Hadian Rasanan, A. H., Gluth, S., & Hahnel, U. J. J. (2026). Economic and behavioural policy coupling has divergent effects on electric vehicle adoption at individual and system scales. Nature Energy. doi.org/10.1038/s41560-026-02114-6
Message quality and audience characteristics shape evaluation and impact of real-world social media climate communication
People agree which climate advocating messages they like best. Good climate communication can be powerful. This is the bottom line of our new publication.
We empirically analyze climate messages from Twitter: How are these messages received and how impactful are they? We find surprising agreement about message rankings: some messages were consistently evaluated more positively than others by people from different countries and political leaning.
We also find that messages with higher empirical evaluations increase people’s climate change concern and reduce the odds to subsequently engage with climate disinformation.
Publication
Azad, Z. R., Spampatti, T. & Hahnel, U. J. (2026). Message quality and audience characteristics shape evaluation and impact of real-world social media climate communication. Journal Of Environmental Psychology, 113, 103112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103112