Climate change may be the most fundamental collective action problem of all time. To solve it through collective action, collective motivation is required. Yet, given the complexity and scale of the collective problem, it may be difficult for individuals to experience such motivation. Intriguingly, the experience of hope may increase collective motivation and action. We offer an integrative coping perspective on hope and collective action in the context of climate change. It explains how hope stimulates individuals’ collective motivation to act against climate change (serving a problem-focused coping function), or fails to do so (serving an emotion-focused coping function). Testing these competing hypotheses, we conducted three studies that experimentally manipulated a core antecedent of hope (i.e., the perceived possibility of change) among US participants (total N = 1020). Across the board, this manipulation increased individuals’ hope but not their collective motivation and action. Furthermore, collective motivation predicted collective action intentions across all three studies. Hoping thus seems to serve an emotion-focused coping function and hence may not increase the collective motivation required for collective action in the context of climate change.

气候变化可能是有史以来最根本的集体行动问题。为了通过集体行动解决这一问题，需要集体动力。但是，鉴于集体问题的复杂性和规模，个人可能很难体验到这种动机。有趣的是，希望的经历可能会增加集体的动机和行动。在气候变化的背景下，我们对希望和集体行动提出了综合应对的观点。它解释了希望如何激发个人的集体动机来应对气候变化（发挥以问题为中心的应对功能），或者没有做到（履行以情感为中心的应对功能））。为了检验这些相互矛盾的假设，我们进行了三项研究，以实验方式操纵了美国参与者的希望（即总的N = 1020）希望的核心前提。总体而言，这种操纵增加了个人的希望，但没有增加他们的集体动力和行动。此外，集体动机预测了所有三项研究中的集体行动意图。因此，希望似乎起到了以情感为中心的应对功能，因此可能不会增加在气候变化的背景下采取集体行动所需的集体动机。