Abstract
Modifying attitudes and behaviours related to climate change is difficult. Attempts to offer information, appeal to values and norms or enact policies have shown limited success. Here we examine whether participation in a climate prediction market can shift attitudes by having the market act as a non-partisan adjudicator and by prompting participants to put their ‘money where their mouth is’. Across two field studies, we show that betting on climate events alters: (1) participants’ concern about climate change, (2) support for remedial climate action and (3) knowledge about climate issues. While the effects were dependent on participants’ betting performance in Study 1, they were independent of betting outcomes in Study 2. Overall, our findings suggest that climate prediction markets could offer a promising path to changing people’s climate-related attitudes and behaviour.