Fondazione GRINS
Growing Resilient,
Inclusive and Sustainable
Galleria Ugo Bassi 1, 40121, Bologna, IT
C.F/P.IVA 91451720378
Finanziato dal Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR), Missione 4 (Infrastruttura e ricerca), Componente 2 (Dalla Ricerca all’Impresa), Investimento 1.3 (Partnership Estese), Tematica 9 (Sostenibilità economica e finanziaria di sistemi e territori).
Open Access
GRINS THEMATIC AREAS
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Knowledge gaps and biased beliefs concerning both climate change and climate policy represent major obstacles to the decarbonization process. Climate education may offer a scalable solution to address these barriers.
In the context of a national reform of the school curriculum in Italy, we implemented a nationwide field experiment, training thousands of secondary school teachers across thousands of schools using a staggered design. Our intervention—a comprehensive course on climate change and climate policy—goes beyond the light-touch interventions typically examined in the literature.
Using extensive survey data, we examine how the training affects teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and policy preferences and, in turn, those of their students.
Our study highlights significant initial knowledge gaps and biased beliefs about climate change among both teachers and students, and provides evidence that climate education can address them at scale. Following the intervention, teachers and students also reconsider their support for climate policies.
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AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Timo Goeschl, Glenn Harrison, John List, Matthias Roesti, Alberto Salvo, Tim Sass, and seminar attendees at ETH Zurich, Georgia State University, Heidelberg University, IDEE (Innovations, Données et Expérimentations en Education), Johannes Kepler University Linz, National University of Singapore, Paris Dauphine University, Santa Fe Institute, Università della Svizzera italiana, University of Copenhagen, University of Georgia, University of Gothenburg, University of Missouri, University of Montpellier, University of Oslo, University of Tennessee, University of Toronto, Yale University, and participants in the 2023 CESifo Summer Institute on People’s Understanding of and Support for Economic Policies, LEAP Bocconi-Fondazione Cariplo Conference, Southeastern Workshop on Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy, 2024 annual conferences of the European, Italian, and Nordic Associations of Environmental and Resource Economists, conference of the Society for Environmental Law and Economics, 2025 Climate Risk Management Conference, conference of the Economic Science Association, European Economic Association, European Political Science Association, Environmental Policy and Governance conference, final conference of “Spoke 6: Low Carbon Policies of Growing Resilient INclusive and Sustainable – GRINS Project Partnership 9, PNRR,” IZA Workshop on Climate and Environmental Economics: Applied and Behavioral Perspectives, 2026 Appalachian Experimental and Environmental Economics Workshop, and 2nd Workshop on Frontiers in Measurement and Survey Methods. We also thank Benard Akalbeo, Sunyoung An, Edoardo Ardito, Getenet Atakilt, Valentina Bianciardi, Alessandro Cupolo, Alessio Corò, Vincent D’Anzi, Lorenzo Furlani, Guglielmo Imperiali d’Afflitto, Laura Lufray, Giacomo Manferdini, Federico Pagano, Martina Rovetto, Arash Sabzevari, Najwa Sadki, Ester Sartori, Rodrigo Sanchez Sienra, Benedetta Simonini, and Danilo Volpe for excellent research assistance, and the Centro Interdipartimentale di Documentazione Economica (C.I.D.E) of University of Verona, for their support in cleaning and organizing the data. Carattini acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, grant number PZ00P1_180006/1. Giustinelli acknowledges financial support from Bocconi Junior Researchers’ Grants (Year 2020) and from the European Union – NextGenerationEU, in the framework of the GRINS – Growing Resilient, INclusive and Sustainable project (GRINS PE00000018 – CUP B43C22000760006). The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of funders, nor can funders be held responsible for them. No funder had any involvement in the study design; the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; the writing of the paper; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.
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