Framing Messages on the Economic Impact of Climate Change Policies: Effects on Climate Believers and Climate Skeptics

ABSTRACT

Citizens are increasingly polarized on climate change, making persuasive communication on the issue rarely effective. We investigated how individuals with different climate change beliefs evaluated gain- and loss-framed messages on the environmental and economic impact of a related policy. In Studies 1 & 2, we found that Italian (N = 240) and American (N = 172) participants evaluated the differently framed messages according to their initial climate change beliefs, except in the crucial case of loss-framed economic messages (i.e. stressing the financial burden of the policy), which were evaluated similarly by both climate believers and skeptics. Exposure to this frame also had a significant negative effect on support for the policy. In Study 3, the same effect was found with a nationally representative sample (N = 496) of Italian citizens. Discussion focuses on the benefits, and potential drawbacks, of communication regarding the economic consequences of climate change policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Framing
• climate change
• communication
• climate skepticism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of the studies are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The ITANES group has been analyzing the Italians’ voting behavior since the beginning of 1990s. Readers interested in this research program should visit the website www.itanes.org. The 2018 ITANES survey was conducted prior to the March 4th Italian political election and involved a representative sample of Italian voters.