Removing barriers to promote transition: the role of psychological distance as a barrier to tipping points.

This contribution aims to study socio-psychological barriers to radical shifts, which is a crucial step to engage people with the transformations required to contrast climate change. An overall low engagement in behaviors which can promote such transformations has been shown. The gap between the seriousness of a risk and the level of awareness and involvement of public opinion can be explained by how much a risk is perceived as such. People who perceive a risk as psychologically distant do not feel in danger and may not feel the need to adopt pro-environmental behaviors. With the aim of studying the role of psychological distance on the behavioral intention, two different risks - both current and urgent- but which are supposed to be perceived differently, were compared: climate change and covid-19 pandemic. More than 600 questionnaires (half focused on a risk, half on the other) were collected. Together with different dimensions of psychological distance, other factors that can influence the behavioral intention, functioning as barriers, have also been investigated, such as the level of conspiracy. Preliminary results confirmed the role of psychological distance as a barrier. Results will be discussed, focusing on how to overcome the factors that emerged as barriers.