Human-induced global warming drives climate extremes across the entire globe. Thus, people need to understand the consequences of already accumulated CO2, and why reaching the net-zero CO2...Show moreHuman-induced global warming drives climate extremes across the entire globe. Thus, people need to understand the consequences of already accumulated CO2, and why reaching the net-zero CO2 emissions has to be achieved as soon as possible. A communication tool that has power to spread the environmental awareness is data visualisation. The current research aims to find empirical evidence for the effects of three design guidelines (shade, annotations, animation) applied to carbon emissions scenario figures on following outcome measures: climate change risk perception, climate beliefs, climate policy support and real-world action. By testing different ways of visualising the carbon emission figures, we investigated how best to visualise data to convey the message concerning the urgency of taking a climate action due to cumulative impact of CO2. We expected people exposed to visualisations including the most cognitive cues (e.g. annotations) to score highest on the outcome measures. The final sample consisted of 314 non-climate scientists, who were randomly assigned to eight experimental groups and one control group. Our results did not show any effects of the chosen design techniques on any of the outcome measures. The main limitation of this study is a small and homogenous sample. We also concluded that there is some vagueness in the literature concerning how data visualisation design guidelines should be applied. Future research should focus on specifying the data visualisation guidelines and their application, as well as investigating user-cantered and transdisciplinary approaches to improve climate data communication to all types of audiences.Show less
