Gaze on IPCC climate maps carries behaviour-specific signals for intended low-carbon action
Abstract
Climate maps are among the most widely shared products of climate science, yet their effect on the people who look at them is measured almost entirely with questionnaires. We recorded gaze with mobile eye-trackers while people freely viewed climate-projection maps from the IPCC Interactive Atlas, and asked whether how someone looks carries information questionnaires miss. It does, for only one of the three outcomes we tested. Gaze improved prediction of intended low-carbon behaviour in viewers the models had never seen, beyond a broad battery of climate measures and in every model tried. The same features said nothing about how anxious those viewers were, or which audience segment they placed themselves in. Attention to climate information is therefore not a general marker of engagement. It tracks readiness to act. Because a visualisation can be designed around where people look, this opens a route to evaluating climate communication while people are looking.
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BibTeX
@misc{serbekamp2026gaze,
title = {{Gaze on IPCC climate maps carries behaviour-specific signals for intended low-carbon action}},
author = {Étienne Serbe-Kamp and Ayshan Aliyeva and Candelaria Belen Krick and Candela I. Jantus and Yaning Han and Joaquin Navajas and Bahador Bahrami and Ophelia Deroy},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/xwpc7_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/xwpc7_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Gaze on IPCC climate maps carries behaviour-specific signals for intended low-carbon action
AU - Étienne Serbe-Kamp
AU - Ayshan Aliyeva
AU - Candelaria Belen Krick
AU - Candela I. Jantus
AU - Yaning Han
AU - Joaquin Navajas
AU - Bahador Bahrami
AU - Ophelia Deroy
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/17
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/xwpc7_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/xwpc7_v1/
AB - Climate maps are among the most widely shared products of climate science, yet their effect on the people who look at them is measured almost entirely with questionnaires. We recorded gaze with mobile eye-trackers while people freely viewed climate-projection maps from the IPCC Interactive Atlas, and asked whether how someone looks carries information questionnaires miss. It does, for only one of the three outcomes we tested. Gaze improved prediction of intended low-carbon behaviour in viewers the models had never seen, beyond a broad battery of climate measures and in every model tried. The same features said nothing about how anxious those viewers were, or which audience segment they placed themselves in. Attention to climate information is therefore not a general marker of engagement. It tracks readiness to act. Because a visualisation can be designed around where people look, this opens a route to evaluating climate communication while people are looking.
ER -