Coping capacity attenuates the effect of natural disaster risk on conspiracy beliefs

Natural disasters have threatened human societies throughout history, however, their psychological effects on people are not fully understood. We hypothesized that natural disaster risk and lack of coping capacity are positively related to conspiracy beliefs and tested these relationships across three studies. Study 1 analyzed a global dataset (47,816 participants; 67 countries) and found support for the positive relationships between natural disaster risk, lack of coping capacity, and conspiracy beliefs. Study 2 (preregistered; N = 400) manipulated natural disaster risk, yielding the predicted effect on conspiracy beliefs. Study 3 (preregistered; N = 451) introduced an additional manipulation of coping capacity. The results supported our hypothesis that high natural disaster risk predicted increased conspiracy beliefs especially when coping capacity was low. Overall, the findings suggest that improving coping capacity might be effective for governments to reduce people's conspiracy beliefs in the context of natural disasters.