The role of numeracy in moderating the influence of statistics in climate change messages

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have examined how numerical ability may moderate an individual’s response to different types of numeric information, but there is scant research examining how numerical ability may moderate responses to non-numeric vs. numeric information. The present study uses an experiment (complete data for 120 participants) to examine a moderated-mediation model that tests how numeracy may moderate the impact of numeric and non-numeric descriptions of climate change risks on worry and concern for victims, which may, in turn, impact willingness to donate to relevant organizations. The inclusion of numeric instead of non-numeric descriptors significantly increased both concern for victims and willingness to donate for low numerate individuals while there was no difference for highly numerate individuals.