The effect of annotations on CO2 accumulation understanding and attitudes toward climate change policies

One critical yet cognitively challenging component that is not well understood by people is that the effect of anthropogenic factors on atmospheric CO2 cycle. Rapidly increase in concentrations of CO2 are accelerating the alarming impacts of climate change in our lives. Numerous studies have indicated that greater awareness of the gravity of climate change could lead to more proactive steps being taken to mitigate the effect of climate change. This study aimed to enhance understanding of the relationship between CO2 emissions/absorptions (flows), and CO2 levels in the atmosphere (stock). The study assessed participants' stock and flow (SF) comprehension using the Climate Stabilization Task (CST), in which participants were asked what levels of CO2 emissions are needed to be in the future to realize the goal of stabilizing CO2 level in the atmosphere. Focusing on past data, I provided annotations to highlight the link between particular patterns of emissions (flow) and overall CO2 levels (stock) and consequently I aimed to improve participants' SF reasoning. Participants in annotation and annotation with feedback conditions viewed the annotated graphs while the participants in the active control group answered some graph reading questions. Nevertheless, annotation intervention was not strong enough to eliminate the robust SF reasoning error and did not improve performance beyond an active control condition. Further studies should investigate the effect of annotations on the performance of CST by using the trajectories including various schematic patterns so the link between flows and stock patterns can be presented more clearly.