Global Warming’s Six Americas: An Audience Segmentation Analysis

Collabra, 2016

The key message of this chapter is that solving the climate problem will require motivating social and behavioral changes through effective communication. More and better communication about climate issues is needed so people will mobilize solutions. Currently most people in the world do not believe that climate change is worth doing anything about, if they have even heard of it at all. Despite the efforts of many journalists, scientists, educators, and politicians to convey the science behind and urgency of climate disruption, about a third of Americans still deny that climate is changing or that humans cause it, and nearly 60% feel that climate change is not a problem serious enough to affect them. What is more, in many parts of the world, at most 35% of adults have even heard of climate change. This general lack of recognition about the magnitude of climate disruption and the urgency of dealing with it is slowing down the process of implementing solutions. Even if high-level deci...

Environment and Behavior 46(1): 70-101, 2014

To assess the effectiveness of climate change communications, it is important to examine their long-term impacts on individuals’ attitudes and behavior. This article offers an example study and a discussion of the challenges of conducting long-term investigations of behavioral change related to climate change communications (a vital and underresearched area). The research reported is a longitudinal panel study of the impacts on UK viewers of the climate change movie The Age of Stupid. The heightened levels of concern, motivation to act, and sense of agency about action that were initially generated by the movie did not measurably persist over the long term. The results also show that behavioral intentions do not necessarily translate into action. Data analysis raised issues concerning the reliability of participants’ causal attributions of their behavior. This and other methodological challenges are discussed, and some ways of avoiding or lessening problems are suggested.

Climate Change and the Humanities, 2017

Climate change is a collective action problem as much as a physical one and, as such, a necessary precondition for tackling it is some level of public consensus on the urgency of doing so. Despite a general level of concern and awareness, however, there has been no sustained and effective public demand for governments to act. That the media do not simply reflect what is going on in society is widely recognised by media researchers; but the degree to which media representations may be implicated © The Author(s) 2017 A. Elliott et al. (eds.), Climate Change and the Humanities,

Envigogika

The aim of this paper is to provide the review of recently tested interventions that seek to change beliefs, attitudes and behaviors related to global climate change (GCC). The two major approaches, information-based interventions and framing interventions, are presented and discussed. Information-based interventions differ in the underlying models of attitude change, and also in the types of information they use to drive the attitude and behavior change. Interventions focusing on the communication of scientific consensus about the GCC and interventions providing information about the mechanism of GCC are capable to positively influence attitudes to GCC without having polarization effect. Framing interventions emphasize certain dimensions of an issue so that they interact with pre-existing schemata, values, and mental models, which people hold. Gain frames describing the gains that will occur from GCC mitigation are capable to increase concern about GCC as well as positive attitudes...

One of the first rules of effective communication is to “know thy audience.” Climate change public communication and engagement efforts must start with the fundamental recognition that people are different and have different psychological, cultural, and political reasons for acting – or not acting – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This report identifies Global Warming’s Six Americas: six unique audiences within the American public that each responds to the issue in their own distinct way. The six audiences were identified using a large nationally representative survey of American adults conducted in the fall of 2008. The survey questionnaire included extensive, in-depth measures of the public’s climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, motivations, values, policy preferences, behaviors, and underlying barriers to action. The Six Americas are distinguishable on all these dimensions, and display very different levels of engagement with the issue. They also vary in size – ranging from as small as 7 percent to as large as 33 percent of the adult population. The Alarmed (18%) are fully convinced of the reality and seriousness of climate change and are already taking individual, consumer, and political action to address it. The Concerned (33%) – the largest of the six Americas – are also convinced that global warming is happening and a serious problem, but have not yet engaged the issue personally. Three other Americas – the Cautious (19%), the Disengaged (12%) and the Doubtful (11%) – represent different stages of understanding and acceptance of the problem, and none are actively involved. The final America – the Dismissive (7%) – are very sure it is not happening and are actively involved as opponents of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This report introduces these Six Americas by briefly describing each audience and highlighting how they differ from one another; it concludes with detailed demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral profiles of each group. This research provides essential knowledge that can be leveraged by climate educators and communicators throughout American society, including local, state, and national governments, academic institutions, environmental organizations, businesses, faith groups, doctors and scientists, and the media. Successfully addressing this challenge will require a diversity of messages, messengers, and methods, each tailored to meet the needs of different target audiences. This research provides a solid foundation, grounded in social science, to facilitate the changes required to achieve a transition to a low-carbon future.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2019

Although there is an ongoing debate in the world regarding the reality of climate change, it has been largely accepted that climate change is real and happening. Nevertheless, the action on the ground to reign in climate change seems to be slow or absent in many parts of the world. The paper takes note of some of the challenges that the scientists and environmental interest groups face while communicating climate change to enhance environmental engagement. It also reviews some novel and innovative methods suggested by researchers for improving and enhancing the impact of climate change communication. These could also be applied to convey the facts, the perceptions, and the projections related to climate change. The desired policy changes, attitudinal changes, individual behavioral changes, and collective action needed at local and global levels, may then be communicated in more creative ways. There is an urgent and certain need for moving societies into environmental action through right communication. Climate change communication needs to be reoriented and reframed by applying the insights gained from communications research. The communicators need to pay attention to their audience more, so as to frame their communication to match their audience.

2016

Does rhetoric highlighting social norms or mentioning science in a communication affect individuals' beliefs about global warming and / or willingness to take action? We draw from framing theory and collective-interest models of action to motivate hypotheses that are tested in two large web-based survey-experiments using convenience samples. Our results show that attitudes about global warming, support for policies that would reduce carbon emissions, and behavioral intentions to take voluntary action are strongly affected by norm-based and sciencebased interventions. This has implications for information campaigns targeting voluntary efforts to promote lifestyle changes that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2019

Climate change communication" is taking the strategic position in the international and national politics around the globe. In the recent decade, different developing nations have started considering "climate change communication" as an integral part of the political campaigns and sustainable development. Specifically, the current document comprised of two sections. In the first section of the study, authors briefly compared the attributes related to "climate change communication" in the mainstream political parties' manifesto for the general election 2018 in Pakistan in a qualitative manner. In the second part, the difference of opinion among voters of mainstream political parties towards "climate change" was examined. In a bird's eye view, the perceived seriousness of "climate change" as a real challenge among voters mapped by the independent factors of "urbanization," "industrialization," "transportation," and "waste management" for sustainable development through the primary quantitative survey of 732 voters in the country. The finding highlights (1) public understanding of "socio-scientific issues," i.e., climate change is easy to communicate, and (2) how political parties are framing and communicating about "climate change" plays a significant role in climate change communication. The study concludes that "climate change communication" holds a critical role in developing regions' future political discourse to shape sustainable development policies. Keywords Climate change communication. Politics. Pakistan. Socio-scientific issues. Pro-environmental behavior biggest hurdle for the United Nations' sustainable development goals which are targeted to be accomplish by the year 2030 (Biagini et al. 2014). The action regarding climate change can be labeled as initiatives to adapt and mitigate. Adaptation measures the effect of climate change over the lives of individuals and society. However, mitigation highlights the causes and sources of climate change worldwide. To communicate the seriousness of climate change, different communication strategies have already been proposed by different researchers in the literature to trigger social and behavioral change (Corner et al. 2010). Moreover, the social and cultural factors affect critically to define the framing strategies for communicating about climate change and for redefining public perception about global warming (Akerlof et al. 2013). For any socio-psychological and behavioral modeling in the case of socio-scientific issues, the micro-and macro-level factors are inevitable to address, as they amplify the effectiveness of any strategic initiative (Abildtrup et al. 2006). Brulle et al. (2012) indicate that the effect of economic conditions and elite cues is much larger than the scientific risk communication when it comes to policy preferences. The Muhammad Azfar Anwar, Rongting Zhou and Aqsa Sajjad contributed equally to this work.

Risk Analysis, 2012

The deliberately provocative theme of this article is that perceived difficulties in climate change communication (CCC)-e.g., indifference about or denial of climate change's reality, negative consequences, anthropogenic causes, or need to mitigate or adapt to it-are partly the fault of climate change communicators. Fischhoff's model of risk communication development is used to demonstrate that CCC to date has tended to stress persuasion, rather than social movement mobilization or deliberation, and with a focus on the model's early stages. Later stages are not necessarily better, but a more diverse strategy seems superior to a focus perhaps narrowed by empathic, ideological, psychological, and resource constraints. Furthermore, even within persuasion, emphasizing a wider set of values, consequences, and audiences could be fruitful. Social movement mobilization has its own set of weaknesses, but usefully complements persuasion with a focus on developing power, subverting mainstream assumptions, and engaging people in collective action. Deliberation similarly has its drawbacks, but unlike the other two approaches does not define the solution-or even, necessarily, the problem-in advance, and thus offers the chance for people of contending viewpoints to jointly develop concepts and action agendas hitherto unimagined. Simultaneous pursuit of all three strategies can to some degree offset their respective flaws, at the potential cost of diffusion of energies and contradictory messages. Success in CCC is by no means guaranteed by a more diverse set of strategies and self-reflection by communicators, but their pursuit should better reveal CCC's limits.

European Journal of Communication, 2015

This article examines the role of news media on climate change and sustainable energy in the shaping of audience opinions and beliefs and the possible relation of these to behaviours. It reports on a series of studies conducted between 2011 and 2014 which develop existing approaches to audience reception analyses by using innovative methodologies which focus specifically on the negotiation of new information in response to existing beliefs, perceptions and behavioural patterns – both in the short and long term. Audience groups are introduced to new information, to which the range of responses is examined. This approach allows for an exploration of the interplay of socio-political and personal factors as well as the identification of the potential informational triggers for change. The findings suggest that media accounts are likely to have a shaping role in relation to behaviours under a range of specific and coinciding conditions.