Psychological understanding of misinformation and disinformation in the face of environmental crises: Introduction to the special issue.

Exposure to and belief in misinformation and disinformation can foster misunderstandings and misperceptions about climate change and other environmental issues, ultimately delaying essential progress and action. Against this backdrop, this special issue presents a collection of nine papers that deepen and broaden psychological insights into the content of environment-related misinformation and how people respond to it. In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of the concepts of misinformation and disinformation, followed by a discussion of the scope and contributions of the nine papers. Collectively, these papers address the heterogeneity and complexity of climate and environmental misinformation, explain how people process such misinformation, develop intervention and communication strategies, and explore the influence of social and cultural contexts. We conclude by outlining significant future research directions, emphasizing the need to understand environment-related misinformation with content- and context-sensitive approaches.