Communicating Climate Change to a Local but Diverse Audience: On the Positive Impact of Locality Framing
Degeling,Dylan Koolen,Ruud
Degeling,Dylan
Koolen,Ruud
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of locality framing in infographics about sea level rise as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). Our experiment sampled solely inhabitants of Hoek van Holland (HvH), a coastal town in the Netherlands for which future sea level rise is a pertinent issue. We analyzed the participants' attitudes towards ACC mitigating behaviors, and found that an infographic with a local, HvH oriented frame had a higher positive impact on attitudinal change than an infographic with a more general, global frame. To account for demographic variation between participant samples in previous studies on locality framing, whose findings were inconsistent, we also tested if the observed effect of locality framing was moderated by gender, age, education level, income, political background, and religiosity. This was not the case. Our findings advocate for the application of local frames in ACC communication, irrespective of the target population's demographic characteristics.
Description
Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Climate change communication, locality framing, demographic characteristics, attitude towards climate change mitigating behaviors, infographics, SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG 13 - Climate Action
Citation
Degeling, D & Koolen, R 2022, 'Communicating Climate Change to a Local but Diverse Audience : On the Positive Impact of Locality Framing', Environmental Communication, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 243-261. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2021.1998177
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess