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Assessing a Combined Theories Approach to Climate Change Communication

Assessing a Combined Theories Approach to Climate Change Communication . Ted Greenhalgh University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Why this study?. Climate change is the greatest natural threat facing the world today

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Assessing a Combined Theories Approach to Climate Change Communication

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  1. Assessing a Combined Theories Approach to Climate Change Communication Ted Greenhalgh University of Nevada, Las Vegas

  2. Why this study? • Climate change is the greatest natural threat facing the world today • To effectively counter climate change people will have to adopt new habits and technologies • Other public outreach and engagement attempts have only had marginal results

  3. Changing behavior • Researchers and public health campaigns have been trying to change poor behavior for years • Social psychology makes extensive use of the theory of planned behavior • Communication campaigns make extensive use of fear appeals

  4. Conceptual Model

  5. Combined Approach Model • TPB and EPPM form the core of model • Addition of more normative belief variables to gain more understanding of norms effects • Addition of more attitude variables to evaluate cognitive dissonance • Extends both theories and uses them to evaluate a unique and important problem

  6. Combined Model

  7. Design • Pretest survey, exposure to experiment message, post-test survey • Lower carbon footprint message • Controlled multi-factorial design • Control group and 18 test groups: fear treatment (high or moderate), norms treatment (descriptive, social injunctive, personal injunctive), and 3 self-efficacy

  8. First Hypothesis • Lacking any motivational or mitigation information in their stories, the control group will have lower behavioral intent to adopt the innovations than the test groups. • Measured using a one-tailed independent t-test of the two groups • The two groups are significantly different (df=224, F=1.012, p≤.019)

  9. Second Hypothesis • Those individuals in the experimental groups who self-identify as having low environmental concern in the pretest section will have lower levels of adoption than other subjects. • Measured by combining the 3 NEP pretest questions into a single variable and using it in ANOVA with posttest adoption variable.

  10. Second Hypothesis ANOVA Results(df=12/224, F=64.931, p≤.000)

  11. Third Hypothesis • Those subjects with lower combined posttest attitude question scores will have lower levels of intent to adopt the innovations than other test subjects. • Measured by combining the nine posttest attitude questions into a single variable and using it in a one-tailed independent t-test comparing adoption group to non-adopters.

  12. Third Hypothesis (cont.) • Found to be significantly different: (df=36, F=28.663, p≤.011). • Adopters had a mean attitude score of 37.181 compared to non-adopters mean of 25.778. • This indicates non-adopter rationalizing of decisions not to adopt innovation in the face of message information.

  13. General Research Question • How do pre-existing worldview attitudes towards the environment, science, government, religion, or conservatism affect willingness to adopt lower carbon innovations? • Measure by using all pretest questions in regressions with the posttest adoption intent variable.

  14. Research Question (cont.) • To reduce the number of pretest variables and explore how they are interrelated a varimax factor analysis was run using the pretest variables with the following loadings and assigned to new variables for testing.

  15. Research Question (cont.) • Only two of the factors (NEP and conservative skepticism) were found to statistically predict the posttest intention to adopt variable in regression (adj r2=.466, p≤.001 and adj r2=.168, p≤.015, respectively). • To better understand conservative skepticism, the top 30 scorers are shown.

  16. Research Question (cont.)

  17. The Combined Model Analysis

  18. Theory of Planned Behavior Analysis

  19. Conclusion • Climate change communication can benefit from fear appeals messages, although the optimum level of fear and self-efficacy are not certain. • Evaluations of public understanding of complex issues are best done with tools like the combined model that account for pre-existing worldviews and attitudes.

  20. Conclusion (cont.) • More research needs to be done to address fear and self-efficacy in climate change messages. • More research needs to be done using the combined model with random subject samples and different cases. • More research needs to be done to reach people with high conservative skepticism.

  21. Questions and Comments

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