Climate of hope or doom and gloom? Testing the climate change hope vs. fear communications debate through online videos

Abstract

A growing body of research has explored whether evoking hope or fear about climate change is more effective at catalyzing attitude and behavior change among the public. Prior studies on this topic have primarily tested responses to text and/or still image manipulations, finding mixed results. Amid the rapidly growing creation and consumption of climate change video content online, it is important that researchers also consider how the public may engage with hope and fear narratives presented in videos. This study aims to help fill this gap by examining how Americans respond to hope and doom and gloom climate change frames portrayed in short online videos. Participants who watched the hope and doom videos reported experiencing the respective emotions the videos sought to elicit (hope and fear). Participants with different political affiliations and with contrasting climate change attitudes across the Six Americas of Global Warming reported significantly different levels of fear, but only participants across the Six Americas reported significantly different levels of hope. However, despite these emotional responses, neither video was associated with significant differences in climate change risk perceptions, likelihood of behavior change, or likelihood of climate activism. These null results suggest that the impacts of a single hope or fear appeal can be overstated and caution against claims that either hopeful or fear-driven climate change communication strategies are necessarily optimal. Open-ended survey responses to the videos also suggest that ideological views about climate change may be associated with how individuals respond to specific video production elements, including music, editing, pacing, and visuals.