The Power of Moral Words in Politicized Climate Change Communication

ABSTRACT

Based on moral foundations theory and moral framing, through a between-subjects online experiment with a sample of adults residing in the U.S. (N = 407), we compared an individualizing moral frame to a binding moral frame in predicting individuals’ climate change mitigation policies support. Results show that, compared to a pro-environmental message employing binding moral framing, a message using individualizing moral framing leads individuals to perceive that the message is more credible, which in turn increases their support for climate change mitigation policies. This study’s theoretical and practical implications and proposed future directions for research on climate change communication are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral foundations
• moral framing
• climate change
• pro-environmental messages

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The data we used was collected as part of a larger online experiment validating various communicative tools in a variety of context of science issues (N = 1021). Among them, in this study, we only used a subset of the samples randomly assigned to answer questions regarding the issue of climate change.

2 We controlled the potential confounding effects of demographic factors (i.e. age, gender, and race) and political party in PROCESS macro.

3 We controlled the potential confounding effects of demographic (i.e. age, gender, and race) in PROCESS macro.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Graduate School, University of Maryland.