Willingness to Engage in Nonviolent Civil Disobedience
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Provided by: Nature
Scientific Reports
Scientist Reviewed
1112AP
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Synopsis
- In this report, students will learn about factors that correlate with the likelihood that individuals will participate in nonviolent civil disobedience for climate change.
- Students will learn how media bias, climate emotions, beliefs about climate change, and other factors correlate with nonviolent civil disobedience.

Subjects: Civics
Authors: Patrick O. Ansah, Nicholas Badullovich, Teresa Myers, John Kotcher, Seth A. Rosenthal, Anthony Leiserowitz & Edward Maibach , npj Climate Action
Region: United States
Languages: English
Teaching Materials
Positives
- This report defines a few of the content-specific terms within the text, making it easier for students to follow along.
- This report includes data tables to support students' understanding.
Prerequisites
- Students should understand climate change and be familiar with climate-related civic action.
- The vocabulary in this report is advanced and content-specific. Students may need some terms defined before they read.
- Teachers may want to familiarize students with examples of nonviolent civil disobedience and with environmentalists mentioned in the report, such as Greta Thunberg.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Many students may benefit from analyzing this resource alongside this report, especially focusing on the demographics and the trends in the data based on political party association.
- Students can focus on and analyze the Methods section to understand how a study like this is designed.
- Highlighting the section on climate-related emotions, such as hope and anger, teachers can ask students to think about or journal about their own emotions associated with climate change. Teachers may want to use this lesson to facilitate this exploration.
- Teachers can use this resource to make connections to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 13, Climate Action. Teachers can also discuss how civic disobedience may be used to achieve some of the other SDGs.
This journal article discusses what characteristics and qualities of a person, such as political identity or belief in climate change, correlate with their willingness to take part in or support non-violent civil disobedience. These include actions such as sit-ins, blockades, symbolic defacement of art, and more. The article discusses why they hypothesize these characteristics and qualities will correlate with non-violent civil disobedience acceptance, as well as how and why these hypotheses match or differ from results. This discussion will help students understand others' perspectives. Since the article is a peer-reviewed scientific study, it allows students to see an example of these projects. The information presented is accurate, and this resource is recommended for teaching.
Teaching Tips
Standards
Resource Type and Format
Scientist Reviewed
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Our review process ensures that every resource in our library reflects the current state of climate science.
Learn about our review process →

