The Influence Of Lay Theories Of Climate Change On College Students’ Coping Strategies And Intervention Of Everyday Experience Methods

"The day does not speak and four time line,the earth language and all things." In the new era,China continues to implement a national strategy to actively cope with climate change.The public is the beneficiary of the ecological environment,but also the protector and builder.The public’s understanding of climate change is of great significance to the development of a green and low-carbon lifestyle and the realization of China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal.Most of the public who are not familiar with the science of climate change form personal perceptions of climate change in their daily lives.The lay theory of climate change refers to the public’s understanding and explanation of the causes of global climate change based on their daily life experience and climate knowledge without systematically learning climate science knowledge.The lay theory of climate change is related to the public’s coping with climate change.Climate change coping strategies are the methods adopted by people to deal with the stressors of climate change,which can be divided into positive and effective problem-focused coping strategies,meaning-focused coping strategies and negative emotion-focused coping strategies,while the negative coping strategies are not conducive to public mental health.In this study,questionnaire survey,start-up experiment and everyday experience intervention training were used to investigate the types of lay theory of climate change,analyze the impact of lay theory of climate change on climate change coping strategies,and explore self-education methods to promote college students to master positive coping strategies of climate change.In study 1,978 participants from all over the country were surveyed with a self-designed questionnaire,aiming to comprehend the Chinese public’s perception of climate change and its understanding and explanation of the attribution of climate change,and to conduct preliminary analysis the types of lay theories on climate change.The results indicate that lay theory of climate change includes natural cycle theory and man-made acceleration theory.The participants who have systematically studied climate science courses are more likely to hold man-made acceleration theory,while the participants who have not systematically studied climate science courses are more likely to hold natural cycle theory.The public mainly recognizes the causes of climate change from three channels: news feed,weather events in daily life and hot searches on weibo.Their attribution of climate change is abstract,and they often make general attributions to climate change,such as "natural law" or "environmental pollution".In study 2,text materials were used to initiate the experiment to explore the relationship between the lay theory of climate change held by 150 college students and climate change coping strategies.The experiment was a single-factor and completely random design.The independent variables were lay theory of climate change（natural cycle theory and man-made acceleration theory）,and the dependent variables were three coping strategies of climate change.The results showed that natural cycle theorists used more negative emotion-focused coping strategies than positive problem-focused and meaning-focused coping strategies.The man-made acceleration theorists adopted more positive problem-focused and meaning-focused coping strategies than negative emotion-focused coping strategies.In study 3,67 college students who held natural cycle theory in study 2 were turn into subjects,and divided into intervention group and control group,uses the everyday experience methods to the intervention group interval of 34 students by providing climate change the daily experience of self-study materials and requirements,through self education intervention their natural cycle theory point of viewpoint,33 college students in the control group did not do any intervention,and two weeks later,the two groups of subjects filled in the post-test questionnaire at the same time,so as to further explore the effect of lay theory of climate change on climate change coping strategies,and encourage college students to actively cope with climate change with man-made acceleration theory.The results show that the self-education intervention through everyday experience methods can effectively change the natural cycle theorists of climate change to the man-made acceleration theorists,and promote the subjects to deal with climate change emotion-focused coping strategy significantly reduced,the problem-focused and meaning-focused coping strategy significantly increased.To sum up,we came to the following conclusions:（1）Lay theory of climate change includes two types,namely natural cycle theory of climate change and man-made acceleration theory of climate change.The natural cycle theory of climate change is the viewpoint that the public makes natural attribution to global climate change,and the man-made acceleration theory of climate change is the viewpoint that the public makes artificial attribution to global climate change.Individuals who have not systematically studied climate science courses tend to attribute climate change to natural cycle theory.The attributions of individuals who have systematically studied climate science courses tend to be man-made acceleration theory.（2）There are different relationships between lay theory of different types of climate change and the three coping strategies of climate change.The students who hold man-made acceleration theory use more problem-focused and meaning-focused,and use less negative emotion-focused coping strategies.Students with natural cycle theory are more likely to use negative emotion-focused coping strategies than positive problem-focused and meaning-focused coping strategies.（3）The everyday experience methods with the content of providing artificial climate change acceleration materials and self-education as the method can effectively change the natural cycle theory of climate change to the and man-made acceleration theory,and significantly reduce the utilization of emotion-focused coping strategies,significantly increase the problem-focused coping strategies and meaning-focused coping strategies.