Introduction

Meeting international climate goals requires unprecedented cuts in fossil fuel use and acceleration in energy efficiency, renewable energy adoption, and end-use electrification1. But the gap between the emissions expected from current national policies and those compatible with the remaining carbon budget is wide2, with current policies expected to yield about 3.2 °C of warming by 21003. With inadequate national action, climate action by a broad set of societal actors, including sub-national governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is increasingly important4. As of 2023, more than 4200 companies representing almost 40% of the global economy had climate action plans approved by the Science-Based Targets Initiative5, with some companies reporting emissions cuts of more than 35% from 2015 to 20196.

Emissions pledges of sub-national entities are often voluntary. Implementation and success, therefore, depend on those in leadership roles to respond to the urgency of emissions reductions, understand which climate actions are effective, and work to implement them. However, both leaders and the general public are vulnerable to widespread misconceptions, disinformation, and greenwashing that work against meaningful action7,8. For example, while many American mayors are committed to climate action, insufficient knowledge often hinders their implementation of evidence-based climate policies9. Similarly, both the American public10 and corporations11 favor afforestation as a top climate solution. But planting trees does not reduce fossil fuel emissions, the largest contributor to global warming3, and does little to sequester carbon in the near-term because of delays in land acquisition and tree growth. Meanwhile, high-impact solutions, including carbon pricing12 enjoy far less public support13.

There is an extensive literature about the failure of traditional risk communication strategies to spur evidence-based climate action. Especially in the US and other English-speaking countries, climate change is highly politicized, and disinformation and misconceptions about it are widespread14,15,16. Misconceptions pose a barrier to learning about climate change, especially when those misconceptions are reinforced by one’s social group14. Traditional communication approaches often failed to generate intrinsic emotional engagement and a sense of urgency, which are strong predictors of action17. Lastly, individuals are often reluctant to talk about climate change because doing so goes against perceived social norms18. This reticence only furthers the tendency to underestimate others’ concerns about climate change, creating a “spiral of silence”18 or “false social reality”19 that further suppresses the communication that is needed to build consensus for action.

Interactive simulations have been proposed to overcome the limitations of traditional risk communication strategies7 by enabling people to experiment and learn for themselves and to do so in an emotionally engaging and social way20,21,22. Here, we use the En-ROADS climate policy simulator to ask whether interactive simulation-based workshops can inform decision-makers in government, business, and civil society about high-impact climate solutions and motivate them to act. En-ROADS enables users to test a wide range of climate mitigation actions and receive immediate feedback on their effect on energy production and costs, land use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, temperature, and a variety of physical, health, and economic impacts of climate change23. User-specified inputs include 17 policy or action sliders to encourage or discourage the use of fossil fuels, renewable, nuclear, and other energy supplies; energy efficiency in transport, buildings, and industry; electrification of transport, buildings, and industry; land use; and non-CO2 GHGs23. Each of these 17 sliders has detailed settings that enable users to specify details for each policy area, such as selecting start and end times, stringency, or level of effort in policy implementation. Users can also change many of the underlying assumptions in the model, including projections of global population, economic growth, climate-Earth system feedbacks, and rates of technological change23. En-ROADS integrates current climate and energy science, is calibrated to historical data and larger climate and integrated assessment models, and is tested against a wide range of climate scenarios, including Network for Greening the Financial System and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Shared Socioeconomic Pathways23. En-ROADS is freely available online, accessible to non-experts, and has been used by more than 372,000 people in 168 nations (https://www.climateinteractive.org/en-roads/), including more than 24,000 leaders in government, business, and civil society (https://mitsloan.mit.edu/centers-initiatives/sustainability-initiative/mit-climate-pathways-project#our-impact), since its release in 2019.

Recent research indicates that engaging with En-ROADS or a related model, C-ROADS, enhances participants’ understanding of climate change and its solutions, their desire to learn more, and their intent to take action to combat it20,21,22,24,25. However, many participants in prior research were students who did not hold leadership positions or have the power to implement climate policies. Students may update their climate beliefs more readily than older adults26. To affect policy decisions today, it is important to ask whether interactive simulation can inform and motivate today’s leaders.

Here we employ a sample of elected and appointed US government officials, including members of Congress, mayors, diplomats, senior executives, and professionals in business and NGOs (Tables 1 and S1). Using a mixed-methods approach, we ask what participants learn as a result of engaging with En-ROADS during interactive workshops. We find that leaders and professionals make significant gains in their understanding of climate solutions and motivation to advocate for informed action. They develop a stronger sense of the need for rapid climate action and motivation to implement high-impact climate solutions.

Table 1 Interviewees’ title or position, sector, country or region, and prior focus on sustainability or climate change
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Results

Survey-based analyses

Quantitative analyses of survey responses show statistically significant gains in participants’ affective engagement with climate change and its potential solutions (Table 2). They made small but statistically significant gains in their sense of the personal importance of climate change (effect size, r = 0.130; p = 0.025) and moderate gains in their sense of empowerment to contribute to addressing it (r = 0.286; p < 0.001). Participants also made statistically significant gains in their ability to identify which climate solutions have high or low impact on future warming. High-impact solutions are policies and actions that cut GHG emissions substantively and in the near term, thereby enabling lower cumulative emissions and, therefore, lower warming (e.g., refs. 12,27). In contrast, low-impact solutions take time to scale or have little effect on net emissions, allowing GHG accumulation and, therefore, warming, to continue (e.g., ref. 28). These gains in participant knowledge were particularly strong for carbon pricing (r = 0.514; p < 0.001), which has high impact in the real world12,29. Participants also made moderate gains in identifying cutting methane and other non-CO2 GHG emissions27 (r = 0.220; p < 0.001) and improving the energy efficiency of buildings30 (r = 0.195; p = 0.001) as high-impact solutions. Participants’ ability to identify some widely-promoted but low-impact policies also improved (Table 2). These changes were small but statistically significant for soil carbon sequestration31 (r = 0.190; p = 0.001), moderate for afforestation28 (r = 0.325; p < 0.001), and large for increasing R&D for new zero-carbon energy sources32 (r = 0.479; p < 0.001).

Table 2 Summary statistics for Wilcoxon signed-rank tests comparing pre- and post-En-ROADS survey responses for each outcome variable
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We asked whether holding En-ROADS simulation sessions online led to different learning outcomes than in-person sessions. We found no statistically significant differences in pre- to post-En-ROADS gains from virtual and in-person sessions from almost all outcome variables, except for carbon capture technology (Table S2). Note that the versions of En-ROADS used in these simulations (En-ROADS versions 2.7.38, from April 2021, to 23.10.0, from October 2023) included fewer constraints on the scaling and impact of carbon capture technology than more recent releases (as of the time of writing, the current release is v. 25.6.0)23.

Interview-based analyses

Semi-structured interviews enabled us to ask participants about the impact of En-ROADS and the reasons for any changes in their knowledge, affect, and intended actions around climate change. Combined deductive and inductive coding33 yielded five major themes with a set of 28 codes. Themes were related to learning about climate change and its potential solutions (Table 3); the personal, emotional, and social impacts of the simulation (Table 4); and motivation to act spurred by the experience (Table 5). Below, we explain how interviewees’ comments address each of our research questions (RQs; see “Methods”).

RQ1. How does engagement with En-ROADS compare to other ways of learning about climate change and its solutions?

Table 3 Themes and codes related to learning about climate change and its potential solutions from qualitative analyses of interview data
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Table 4 Themes and codes related to personal, emotional, and social impacts of the simulation from qualitative analyses of interview data
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Table 5 Codes related to the theme of climate action spurred by the simulation from qualitative analyses of interview data
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Most interviewees said the simulation improved their understanding of the scale and urgency of the climate crisis and high-impact policies to address it (Fig. 1, Table 3, Extended Data Fig. 1). Almost all thought that the interactive nature of En-ROADS simulations enhanced learning and made its complex concepts more accessible, e.g.,

“If you get more interaction, you can keep and take more away…. Doing something and really playing with the levers it’s much more effective than only reading a text, listening to a podcast, or watching a video.”—Vice President of Management Communication for an energy utility company.

RQ2. Does engagement with En-ROADS affect participants’ sense of urgency about climate change and its solutions?

Fig. 1: Heatmap showing the percentage of each category or sector of interviewees for whom each code was observed.
Fig. 1: Heatmap showing the percentage of each category or sector of interviewees for whom each code was observed.The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
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Values shown represent the average percentage of interviewees with a particular code across coders. Interviewees with a prior focus on sustainability are shown in the column labeled “Sust,” while those in different fields are shown in the column labeled “NoSust”.

The simulation experience aroused strong and varied emotions among interviewees (Fig. 1, Table 4). Most described an increased sense of urgency about climate change, greater motivation to act, and greater hope about climate solutions. These positive emotions were sometimes accompanied by negative emotions, with about a third of the interviewees saying they felt both more hopeful and more overwhelmed or disheartened (Fig. 1). En-ROADS simulations sometimes triggered strong emotional responses, as shown by these quotes from participants:

“Actually I think quite a lot of people were like, oh my God,… it’s a nightmare. We (sic) got to do this. That was the kind of reaction… that came out of quite a lot of people. But from my perspective, that’s actually quite good because it makes them think … there’s a reason there’s urgency here.”—Head of Responsible Investment of a major investment firm.

“I feel scared… I can’t even stop thinking about it. What if this happened? How we could (sic) manage this planet? Literally, in a couple of days, four days … I was not me…. I was not myself…. I wasn’t the same person now….”—Development Lead for a major technology company.

RQ3. Do social interactions during engagement with En-ROADS play a role in participants’ sense of collective efficacy and willingness to take collective action in the real world?

Interviews also highlighted the importance of social interactions during the simulation, which a quarter of interviewees described as influencing what they learned and how they intended to act on climate (Fig. 1, Table 4). Social interactions gave many interviewees a sense of collective efficacy, which contributed to their motivation to share En-ROADS to influence decision-making (Fig. 1, Table 4), e.g.,

“Certainly, as we went through, I think there was a collective sense that emerged early on and let’s find things that … grow the economy and reduce CO2 emissions.”—US Congressperson.

“I have persuaded my colleagues in the boards of [redacted] to make a common session, where we all together … apply … En-ROADS and … answer our questions about what is the best strategy …. I think we need … the security and also the safety that everybody knows about the problem, everybody knows about the mechanisms and the measures that you can have in order to tackle the problem.”—Chief Operating Officer of an electric utility.

RQ4. Does engagement with En-ROADS affect what participants plan or do to address to climate change in the real world?

Most participants described recent or planned climate actions that they attributed to engaging with En-ROADS (Fig. 1, Table 5). These ranged from cutting their own carbon emissions to advocating for climate action in their personal networks, sharing En-ROADS with others, or advocating for pro-climate decisions in their organizations or by governments, for example:

“It helped us to see that … policy is such a big needle mover… We didn’t even have a policy team at my company when we did this exercise and now we do. And we’ve made it a huge part of that team as they are getting up and running to say, ‘we should be active on climate policy as much as we can.’”—Vice President of Social Impact and Sustainability for a technology firm.

“…it’s being used as that real tool to really get people mobilized and motivated and thinking about it and understanding the challenge and taking this serious.”—Head of Responsible Investment for a major bank.

RQ5. How do outcomes differ for participants who already have a background in sustainability?

Interviewees with a prior focus on climate change and sustainability described making gains in their knowledge about climate change, its solutions, and their personal connection to the issue from En-ROADS simulations (Fig. 1). Many said they were better informed about the scale and urgency of the problem and high-impact actions to address it. Almost half said it increased their confidence in their knowledge about climate solutions and their ability to act. The results suggest that even individuals who are actively and professionally engaged with sustainability still found value in the simulation experience.

The impact of En-ROADS on sustainability-focused interviewees also differed from that of other interviewees in some ways. While about half of sustainability-focused interviewees said the simulation made them feel motivated and hopeful, they were less likely to feel hopeful than other interviewees (Fig. 1). Among sustainability-focused interviewees who gained hope and motivation, a greater proportion also described feeling overwhelmed (Fig. 1), e.g.:

“Before I felt emboldened by seeing what did work, [but] I felt …really frustrated and shocked at what didn’t work.”—Vice President of Social Impact and Sustainability for a technology firm.

“I guess it’s always a tradeoff between… urgency and frustration isn’t (sic) the right word, but just being … bogged down [with] the enormity of the task.” —Policy Fellow at a sustainability-focused NGO.

However, sustainability-focused interviewees were more likely to take action at an organizational, collective, level (vs. individual action), and found that the simulation generated a sense of collective efficacy (Fig. 1), e.g.,

“Now the rubber meets the road, because now we have to actually do things like set an internal price on carbon and create a carbon fund….”—Vice President of Social Impact and Sustainability for a technology firm.

Government officials are a key audience in our study because of their direct agency over climate and energy policy. We find that most became better informed about the scale of the problem and high-impact actions to address it. They gained confidence about taking action, and their sense of urgency grew (Fig. 1). A far greater percentage of government vs. private sector interviewees said the experience enhanced their intent and ability to advocate for policy change (Fig. 1), e.g.,

“And I truly do believe that it has given me … deliberate, intentional change and communication with those people around me. And if the conversations can be had, then action can ensue.” —Mayor of a city in the western US.

“I really think that the more we can work [with] industry [for] collaboration legislatively… I think it’s a really important thing to do.” —US Congressperson.

Government officials described recommending En-ROADS to others and having a sense that it affected their personal connection to climate change at rates similar to other groups (Fig. 1).

Discussion

Our mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses show that interactive engagement with the En-ROADS climate policy simulator has a significant impact on how people in positions of leadership think, feel, and intend to act on climate. Interaction with En-ROADS increased participants’ insights into climate solutions, aroused their emotional engagement with climate change, and motivated many to take personal climate action or advocate for action by their organizations or governments. Unlike most prior research on the efficacy of climate simulations (e.g., refs. 20,21,34,35), our sample includes people who influence government policies, major investment portfolios, the development of new technologies, and the strategies of energy companies. Interviewees attributed their learning outcomes to the interactive nature of the En-ROADS simulations (Table 3, Fig. 1), with almost all reporting that it made this complex issue more accessible and enhanced learning. Our results suggest that engaging leaders and their teams with En-ROADS is a useful approach to advance climate decision-making at the organizational and policy levels.

Both En-ROADS Climate Workshops and Climate Action Simulations (referred to together herein as “interactive En-ROADS simulations”) can be rich social experiences. Participants work together to decide which climate solutions to explore, fostering deliberation and collaboration as they explain their ideas and try to convince others about their preferred solutions21. These social experiences likely play an important role in the impact of En-ROADS simulations. Social interactions give rise to emotions36, the intensity of which is thought to drive climate change risk perception, engagement, and intent to act37. Both survey- and interview-based analyses show that interactive En-ROADS simulations aroused emotions, which, in turn, influenced participants’ motivation to act. Survey respondents made statistically significant pre- to post-En-ROADS gains in their feelings of personal importance of climate change and empowerment to contribute to addressing it (Table 2). Simulations held in virtual and in-person formats had similar outcomes (Table S2), indicating that the growing reliance on virtual settings for communication and education does not pose a barrier to scaling interactive En-ROADS simulations.

Many interviewees described experiencing a range of emotions, including an increased sense of urgency, feeling overwhelmed or disheartened, and feeling motivated or hopeful (Fig. 1). Many referred to their heightened sense of urgency as motivation to act (Tables 4 and 5), perhaps to mitigate negative feelings, e.g.,

“…even though I felt before that this was urgent, it also made me feel … where the urgency might be, and there’s this tool that can tell people … we need to do this right now.”—Foreign Service Officer.

“… a lot of what we’re trying to do … is win hearts and minds internally. And so as a result, we ended up [doing] a number of different workshops for quite big groups…. [En-ROADS is] being used as that real tool to … really get people mobilized and motivated….”—Head of Responsible Investments for a major investment firm.

Both anticipating and taking action can mitigate the negative emotional responses to climate change by generating positive emotions, such as a sense of agency and hope36. In En-ROADS simulations, participants who are confronted by the scale and urgency of the climate challenge may be more willing to engage with that sense of urgency because they are also offered agency and feedback about the impact of their simulated actions. The workshops provide a means to translate initial distress into proactive engagement. Thus, negative and positive emotions may work together to spur action.

While it is beyond the scope of the current research to statistically analyze a comprehensive model of how En-ROADS simulations affect learning, affective engagement, and intent to take action, its findings are consistent with constructivist learning about complex systems7,38, social cognitive theory39, and dual-process models of decision-making17. En-ROADS simulations provide a feedback-rich, social learning environment that offers a means for participants to construct new mental models about the complex climate and energy systems. Participants work together to decide on and simulate climate solutions in En-ROADS, which can foster a belief that they can take effective action and, thereby enhances a sense of self- and collective efficacy. This sense of efficacy underpins social cognitive theory39,40. Their emotional responses engage automatic and intuitive processing (System 1), while interacting with En-ROADS supports analytic reasoning (System 2)41. These two forms of processing can work together to drive motivation to take informed action, especially when emotional responses are combined with actionable insights and a sense of agency37.

Both the quantitative and qualitative results suggest that En-ROADS is an effective tool to engage people who have a prior focus on sustainability (Tables 3–5, Fig. 1). These interviewees were more likely than their counterparts to describe acting at the organizational level, rather than only at the personal level (Fig. 1). Such actions include steering investment decisions away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, setting a regional shadow price for GHG emissions, an organization-internal, or country-wide price on carbon emissions, and transitioning their company’s vehicle fleet to electric vehicles (see exemplar quotes above in Table 5). Interviewees with a sustainability focus were also more likely than their counterparts to describe a sense of collective efficacy from their simulation experiences (Fig. 1, Table 4), suggesting that they recognize the importance of collective action on climate. Many described using En-ROADS to advocate for pro-climate decisions or policies (Extended Data Fig. 1). Unlike audiences who first need to understand the reality and scale of climate change, sustainability-focused professionals and leaders are already familiar with the climate crisis and hold positions in which they are charged with addressing it42. They recognized that En-ROADS gave them new insights and a tool that they are well-positioned to deploy.

Limitations and future work

Limitations of this study include: the limited time leaders and professionals have available to participate in workshops or to complete surveys or interviews; self-selection of participants in both En-ROADS simulations and survey or interview completion; and a sample drawn mostly from the US and exclusively from the Global North. Participation in the simulation, pre- and post-surveys, and interviews was voluntary. Participants may be more likely to have a prior interest in climate issues than their counterparts who chose not to participate. We addressed the possibility of non-response bias by comparing the pre-survey responses of participants who provided matched surveys to those who only provided pre-surveys. We found no statistically significant differences (see “Methods”; Extended Data Table 1), despite having a sample size that was sufficient to detect small effect sizes (Cohen’s d > 0.2) with a power of 0.8, given observed standard deviations in our data, indicating no evidence for non-response bias. Semi-structured interviews may also introduce biases, as participants may provide socially desirable responses or overemphasize the simulation’s influence due to recall bias or be influenced by the level of mutual trust and rapport between interviewee and interviewer43, which we did not measure.

Future research could include a sample from more diverse industries, political ideologies, countries, and climate engagement levels. It could also incorporate measures of simulation outcomes that do not rely on participants’ responses, such as analysis of participants’ public sphere communications before and after En-ROADS workshops. Lastly, future research could include analysis of causal relationships between gains in knowledge, affect, and intent to act that are fostered by En-ROADS.

Implications

Our mixed-methods approach shows that interactive simulation with En-ROADS has the potential to motivate leaders in government, business, and NGOs to take personal climate action and to advocate for their organizations or governments to act. The simulation workshop is an active, social learning experience that often arouses strong emotions and can foster a commitment to learning and doing more. Leaders and professionals experienced a greater sense of urgency and intent to take climate action. They overcame widespread misconceptions about and preference for climate solutions that have little impact on slowing down expected warming this century, such as afforestation10. Instead, they were more likely to favor high-impact solutions that cut emissions substantively in the near-term, like pricing carbon12 and improving energy efficiency in buildings30. These improvements in their ability to distinguish high- vs. low-impact climate solutions can help focus their efforts on actions that can make a difference in time. While it may not be possible to attribute formal policy changes directly to En-ROADS simulations, many participants expressed their intent to change organization-internal communication, broader advocacy, organizational strategies, or municipal policies because of their participation. These changes are consistent with early stages of agenda-setting and organizational learning44 and indicate that simulation-based interventions may influence long-term decision processes. En-ROADS simulations are already used to train leaders in graduate and professional education in many universities and companies45. Expanding the use of En-ROADS and other interactive simulations in training sessions, corporate strategic planning, and public forums could help bridge the gap between climate pledges and implementation.

Methods

We used a mixed-methods approach46, combining quantitative analysis of pre-/post-simulation survey responses with qualitative analysis of semi-structured interview transcripts. This approach enabled us to not only assess quantitatively the extent to which engaging with En-ROADS is associated with particular outcomes, but also how and why these outcomes occur.

Our approach was informed by theories from social psychology, learning science, and climate change communication. Constructivist learning theory and experiential education models support the use of interactive simulations to deliver gains in knowledge about complex climate solutions because simulations provide learner-centered and feedback-rich learning environments38. Emotional engagement with climate change, such as a sense of urgency or hope about the issue, is linked to climate risk perception and action17. Self-efficacy, measured here as reported sense of empowerment, is considered by social cognitive theory to be a key driver of motivation and behavior change39. Lastly, the social interactions during En-ROADS workshops include deliberation and collaborative decision-making, which should support participants’ sense of collective efficacy, a driver of pro-social behavior and norm-based action19,40.

Survey-based study

Sample and data collection

A pre- and post-simulation survey was administered to 949 participants in 37 En-ROADS simulation sessions (Supplementary Table 1). Thirty-four sessions were interactive En-ROADS Climate Workshops. These workshops are interactive experiences, guided by a facilitator, in which participants use En-ROADS to explore their own ideas about actions to limit global warming. These can be one-on-ones or group experiences of any size up to multiple hundred people23,47. In addition to these workshops, three other sessions were Climate Action Simulations21. These are interactive role-plays premised on a fictitious climate summit organized by the United Nations Secretary-General to urgently address climate change. Participants take the roles of leaders from different nations, industries, and civil society groups and negotiate agreements to limit emissions and warming. In both the workshops and role-plays, participants seek to develop a set of actions and policies that limit expected warming to “well below 2 °C” as specified in the Paris Agreement48. Sessions last between 1 and 3 h.

Both formats, workshops and role-play simulations, begin with a brief introduction to En-ROADS, its purpose and design principles, underlying structure and assumptions, and user interface. Facilitators often provide an overview of how the simulator is used to support other decision-makers in the same sector as participants. Facilitators briefly introduce the international climate goal48 and explain to participants that their charge is to agree on a set of actions and policies that are expected to meet this goal. Participants make their own decisions about which climate solutions to implement and work to convince others to agree. They advocate for their favored solution, deliberating with other participants about what should be implemented and why. The facilitator enters consensus decisions into En-ROADS, which provides immediate feedback about many of the expected consequences of their decisions, including global mean temperature rise; climate change impacts such as flooding from sea level rise in any user-specified coastal location, additional deaths from extreme heat, expected decline of crop yields, economic damage, and more; changes in the energy system, including energy sources, costs, and associated emissions; and changes in land use and forestry23. Participants engage in an iterative process of deliberating about which climate solutions to implement, working together and with moderation by a facilitator, to understand the impacts of those solutions in the En-ROADS simulator, and returning to deliberations to decide what to do next. Workshops and Climate Action Simulations end with a debrief that aims to cement participants’ insights about the climate and energy systems and their implications for real-world action. Facilitators ask participants for their feelings about being part of the developed scenario and what to do next, professionally and/or privately. Because both the En-ROADS Climate Workshop and En-ROADS Climate Action Simulation have the same learning goals, experiential learning approach, and information provided (via an introductory presentation and the En-ROADS model), we refer to both formats broadly as “En-ROADS simulations”.

Our sample includes leaders from companies in the technology, energy, and finance industries; government officials and public servants, including municipal and state government officials, diplomats, and members of the European Commission; and leaders from non-profits focused on climate and energy policy (Supplementary Information, Table 1). Leaders and professionals in our sample had limited time for both the simulation and surveys. We therefore kept the survey short, and we used the same survey pre- and post-En-ROADS engagement (Supplementary Information, Survey questions). This approach enabled us to include high-level business leaders and government officials and to collect data from a larger sample. Conversely, it precluded research questions about the effects of participants’ sociodemographic traits or sociopolitical values on simulation learning outcomes. However, prior research that relied primarily on students drawn from diverse educational settings (i.e., including high schools, undergraduate and graduate programs, executive MBA programs, and informal educational settings)20,21,22 showed that interactive simulations with En-ROADS or the related C-ROADS49 model were effective across participants with diverse ages, genders, and identities, and sociopolitical values.

Survey questions were designed to elicit whether participants consider climate change to be personally important, feel empowered to take action to combat it, and are able to identify high-impact climate policies and actions. Four-point Likert scales were used because they enabled us to use some of the same survey questions as in prior research20,22,25, thereby opening the potential for future work comparing results across multiple studies. Similarly, some of the questions were adapted from prior research by the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication (e.g., ref. 16), which relies on four-point Likert scales. While broader scales could offer more nuanced measurements, four-point scales balance nuanced measurement with ease of response, opportunities to compare to prior survey instrument results, reliability, and descriptive statistics (e.g., ref. 50).

We refer to “high-impact” policies and actions as those that can cut emissions rapidly and substantively in the near term, as shown in energy transition research. They include policies that: put a price on carbon, which is associated with rapid emissions cuts in power and industry sectors12; improve the energy efficiency of buildings, such as robust building codes and financial incentives for energy-saving retrofits30; and cutting emissions of methane and other non-CO2 GHGs with high global warming potentials27. In contrast, policies and actions with low impact do little to cut emissions in the near term, take time to scale, or are constrained by cost or other factors. For example, while afforestation may have some long-term climate change mitigation potential, it takes decades for newly planted trees to grow and sequester carbon, and that growth is uncertain and vulnerable to outbreaks of pests or disease, fires, and human development28. Technological carbon removal is estimated to only sequester about 0.005% of current annual emissions and, even if rapidly scaled, is only likely to sequester less than 1% of annual emissions in 203051. Similarly, sequestering carbon in soils is not permanent and is unlikely to reach its projected potential due to physical limits and social barriers31. New technologies for supplying zero-carbon electricity, such as nuclear fusion, are not expected to contribute significantly to the energy transition until after 205032. The impact of all of these policies is easily explored in En-ROADS. Our survey asks respondents to identify three policies that are “most effective” among a list of policies that include both higher impact policies (i.e., “put a price on carbon,” “cut emissions of methane and other non-CO2 gases,” and “improve energy efficiency of buildings”) and lower impact policies (i.e., “plant trees,” “sequester carbon in soils,” “carbon capture technology,” “R&D for a new zero-carbon energy supply”).

Survey completion was voluntary. Participants were either sent a link to the pre-survey within a week prior to the simulation session or were asked to complete the pre-survey at the start of the session. The post-survey was administered immediately after or within about a week of the simulation session. Surveys included a question that asked participants for their written consent to participate after a brief explanation of the purpose of the associated research, the fact that individual survey responses would be kept confidential, and the voluntary nature of participating (Supplementary Information, Consent to participate). They also included a question asking participants to provide their name, which was used to match pre- and post-survey responses. Survey responses were de-identified after matching. Survey instruments and administration, including informed consent procedures, were approved by the UMass Lowell Institutional Review Board (Protocol 21-024-ROO-EXM) and were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (Clinical trial number: not applicable). The dataset52 from this research is freely available at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30795845.

Quantitative analysis of survey responses

We included respondents in pre- to post-En-ROADS analyses if they provided matched pre- and post-surveys (about 32% of all participants). Given that survey completion was voluntary, it is possible that participants who felt more strongly about the topic, whether positively or negatively, were more likely to respond than others. We tested for potential response bias by using Mann-Whitney U tests to compare the pre-survey responses from participants who only provided pre-surveys (N1 = 503–507, depending on the survey question) to those who provided matched pre- and post-surveys (N2 = 289–292, Extended Data Table 1). We estimated the power of these analyses using the “pwr” package53 in R, with N1 = 503, N2 = 289, α = 0.05, and a Cohen’s d effect size of 0.2. The resulting estimate was 0.8, which is generally considered to be sufficient power to avoid Type II errors54, or to incorrectly accept the null hypothesis that there are no differences between pre-survey responses with or without matched post-surveys.

As participants learn about the consequences of climate change and its potential solutions in En-ROADS simulations21,25, we hypothesized that both their sense of personal connection or importance of climate change and their sense of empowerment to address it would increase. The survey question about “personal importance” asked “how important is the issue of climate change to you personally?”, which participants responded to on a four-point Likert scale (Very important, Somewhat important, Not very important, Not at all important). A four-point ordinal scale was used to code these responses, with a value of four corresponding to “Very important” and one corresponding to “Not at all important”. The question about “empowerment” asked “How do you feel about being able to contribute personally to address the issue of climate change?”, also provided responses on a four-point Likert scale (Very empowered, Somewhat empowered, Not very empowered, Not at all empowered), coded as a four-point ordinal variable. We coded outcome variables for participants’ ability to identify high-impact solutions as binary responses, with each solution identified as either high-impact or not high-impact.

We used Wilcoxon signed-rank tests to compare paired pre- and post-survey responses for each outcome variable (Table 2). The power for these analyses was again estimated using the “pwr” (https://github.com/heliosdrm/pwr) package in R with N = 289, α = 0.05, and a Cohen’s d effect size of 0.2, with a resulting estimate of 0.9.

Interview-based study

Sample and data collection

We recruited interviewees who were in leadership positions from the En-ROADS sessions (Supplementary Table 1), as well as from interactive sessions with similar groups or with individual leaders (Table 1; N = 42). Because we are especially interested in the impact of En-ROADS simulations on policymakers, our sample includes a disproportionate (N = 20) number of government officials. It also includes leaders from the private sector (N = 18), including companies in energy (N = 4), technology (N = 6), and finance (N = 8). Lastly, we include several leaders from NGOs focused on climate and energy issues (N = 4). We used information about participants’ positions, background, and education, as well as data they shared in interviews, to assess whether they were already engaged with sustainability and climate change prior to En-ROADS simulations (Table 1). We consider participants to be “working in sustainability” if their job description includes reporting on and managing sustainability initiatives or promoting environmental and/or climate change issues in their organizations55. Participation was voluntary, and we obtained participants’ consent through written communication via email and/or verbal communication (as approved by the UMass Lowell Institutional Review Board, Protocol 21-024-ROO-EXM). Interviews were semi-structured, using questions designed by the research team but allowing the interviewer and interviewee to explore new questions or topics that arose during the interview (see Supplementary Information, Semi-structured interview questions). Interview questions were designed to elicit interviewees’ recollection of the En-ROADS simulation, any insights that surprised them, if and how the simulation changed the way they think or feel about climate change and its solutions, and if and how it affected their own plans to act on climate. We also asked for interviewees’ feedback about En-ROADS, the simulation experience, and their recommendations regarding how it might be used in the future.

Interviews were approximately 30 min and held on Zoom or Microsoft Teams from 3 to 12 months after the interviewee participated in an En-ROADS session. While all interviewees spoke English and agreed to be interviewed in English, we provided English-German interpretation for a few words or phrases for two native German speakers who were not fully fluent in English. Audio and video were recorded, with subsequent transcription using Otter.ai (https://otter.ai/) (N = 37) or Zoom transcripts (N = 5) and manual adjustment to account for the accuracy of the automatic translations.

Qualitative analysis of interview data: coding themes

We iteratively developed a set of coding themes, guided by a priori research questions and themes that emerged from the interview transcripts themselves. Research questions included the following, and refer to “engagement with En-ROADS” as interactive workshops or simulations with other participants, rather than exploring the model individually.

RQ1. How do interactive En-ROADS simulations compare to other ways of learning about climate change and its solutions?

RQ2. Does engagement with En-ROADS affect participants’ sense of urgency about climate change and its solutions? If so, how and why?

RQ3.Do social interactions during engagement with En-ROADS play a role in participants’ sense of collective efficacy and willingness to take collective action in the real world? If so, how and why?

RQ4. Does engagement with En-ROADS affect what participants plan or do to address to climate change in the real world? If so, how and why?

RQ5. How do outcomes differ for participants who already have a background in sustainability, if at all?

These research questions link back to the theoretical underpinnings of our study. RQ1 draws on constructivist learning theory and experiential education, which posit that interactive, feedback-rich environments support deeper understanding of complex systems and climate change in particular7,38. RQ2 is rooted in affective science and the role of emotional responses in climate risk perception and motivation to act17,37. RQ3 is underpinned by social cognitive theory and literature on collective action and social norms19,40. RQ4 aligns with self-efficacy theory and how beliefs about one’s ability to act predict behavior change39. RQ5 examining how outcomes vary for those already working in sustainability, integrates these frameworks by considering how prior identity and domain-specific knowledge shape learning, emotion, and action.

Two researchers (authors RLC and LC) first worked independently to develop themes and codes within those themes from interview data (with each coder using at least 32 interviews). This initial independent effort led to eight themes and 48 codes identified by RLC and seven themes and 53 codes identified by LC. The researchers then worked together to develop a shared set of themes and code definitions, consolidating to avoid redundancies and ensure that each theme and code was clearly defined. These themes and codes were reviewed and refined by a third researcher (author JRV). The resulting codes included five themes that contained 25 codes (Tables 3–5; Fig. S1). Authors RLC and LC then used the codes independently to analyze the full set of 42 interviews using Nvivo software56 to determine the number of interviewees who made a statement associated with each code. Cohen’s Kappa coefficients for inter-coder agreement were calculated for each category and for overall agreement across the analysis (K = 0.86, Extended Data Fig. 1)57.

Ethics declaration

Survey instruments and administration, including informed consent procedures, were approved by the UMass Lowell Institutional Review Board (Protocol 21-024-ROO-EXM) and were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Clinical trial number: not applicable.