A new article presenting findings from a role-playing intervention conducted with secondary school students in Austria has been published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
In the intervention, students took on the role of policy-makers tasked with developing strategies to promote green jobs — a policy issue of increasing relevance for their generation and for achieving a green transition. The study aimed to examine whether this experience would influence students’ psychological engagement with climate change, particularly if they had a positive experience of the group discussions during the activity.
We investigated changes in several measures of climate engagement, including students’ willingness to take part in activism, their belief in the possibility of collective action, and their broader climate change beliefs. Overall, these factors did not change significantly after the intervention. However, students who reported enjoying the discussion were more likely to express stronger belief in the reality of climate change.
These findings suggest that while a single role-playing activity may not shift all aspects of climate engagement, the quality of the group experience matters. This has important implications for climate education and youth engagement, highlighting the value of interactive formats that allow students to actively explore and debate policy solutions.
The article is available open access here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.10261
This article was developed in the context of the EU-funded project GREAT.
Koller, K., & Pahl, S. (2025). Role-playing for better climate discussions: Exploring climate change engagement among Austrian youth. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 104, 102616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102616
