Changing Your Future? An Experimental Study on the Persuasive Effects of an Interactive Climate Change Documentary

Abstract

Interactive digital narratives (IDNs) have the potential to adequately and effectively represent the highly relevant and complex issue of climate change. The interactivity in interactive digital narratives (IDNs) can increase narrative engagement, as IDNs require active participation. Such narrative engagement, in turn, is a well-known mediator of narrative persuasion. One recent IDN is the award-winning interactive Cli-Fi (‘Climate Fiction’) documentary ‘De eeuw van mijn opa’ (DEVMO; ‘Grandfather’s century’), by filmmaker Sam van Zoest. Comparing the original interactive version with a non-interactive version created by the researchers, we used a between-subjects experiment (n=62) to test whether interactivity (yes/no) had an effect on narrative engagement and narrative persuasion. Perceived effectance and perceived autonomy were included as control variables. The results showed that both versions of the documentary had a persuasive effect when comparing scores before versus after exposure. However, the interactive version was not significantly more persuasive compared to the non-interactive version. Furthermore, no evidence was found of narrative engagement as a mediating factor, although narrative engagement did positively affect narrative persuasion. Surprisingly, no differences were found in control variables perceived effectance and perceived autonomy between the conditions with and without interactivity. We discuss several explanations for our findings relating to the study’s power and the operationalization of interactivity in ‘De eeuw van mijn opa’.