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Climatic Change (2012) 113:11051112
DOI 10.1007/s10584-012-0513-6
LETTER
A public health frame arouses hopeful emotions about climate change
A Letter
Teresa A. Myers & Matthew C. Nisbet & Edward W. Maibach & Anthony A. Leiserowitz
Received: 18 January 2012 /Accepted: 22 May 2012 /Published online: 28 June 2012 # The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Communication researchers and practitioners have suggested that framing climate change in terms of public health and/or national security may make climate change more personally relevant and emotionally engaging to segments of the public who are currently disengaged or even dismissive of the issue. To evaluate these assumptions, using a nationally representative online survey of U.S. residents (N01,127) conducted in December, 2010, we randomly assigned six previously identified audience segments on climate change to one of three experimental conditions. Subjects were asked to read uniquely framed news articles about climate change emphasizing either the risks to the environment, public health, or national security and the benefits of mitigation and adaptation-related actions. Results show that across audience segments, the public health focus was the most likely to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Findings also indicated that the national security frame may possibly boomerang among audience segments already doubtful or dismissive of the issue, eliciting unintended feelings of anger.
1 Introduction
Effectively engaging the American public on climate changeincluding its causes, impacts, and solutionsremains both a major research question and a communication challenge.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0513-6
Web End =10.1007/s10584-012-0513-6 ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
T. A. Myers : E. W. Maibach
Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
T. A. Myerse-mail: [email protected]
M. C. Nisbet (*)
School of Communication, American University, Washington, DC 20016, USA e-mail: [email protected]
A. A. Leiserowitz
School of Forestry, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
1106 Climatic Change (2012) 113:11051112
Effective public engagement requires understanding the cognitive, affective, and behavioral nature of audiences (Lorenzoni et al. 2007). In this paper we focus on the affective dimension of climate change engagementa dimension that has received little research attention examining the potential for various frames to elicit emotional reactions consistent...