How Framing Climate Change Influences Citizen Scientists’ Intentions to Do Something About It

Abstract

How we communicate the dangers of climate change may influence attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Here we test two pairs of positive and negative framing statements with North American citizen scientists interested in gardening and birdwatching. Mentioning dangers for humans did not increase participants’ interest in taking personal action on climate change, but mentioning dangers for birds was highly effective. Highlighting the positive collective impacts of small behavioral changes also increased participants’ interest in taking personal action. These results suggest that while some dire messages are ineffective, those evoking concern for target species of significance to the learners may be as successful as positive messages.

Keywords:

• climate change education
• climate change psychology
• collective action
• communicating climate change
• dire messages
• fear appeals
• framing climate change
• group efficacy
• terror management theory

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, USA (DRL–ISE # 0917487). We thank our editors, anonymous reviewers, Walt Koenig, and Pat Leonard for comments on the manuscript, and Poppy McLeod for useful discussion of terror management theory. The survey on which this was based was given under IRB # 1005001414, Cornell University.