Using Political Efficacy Messages to Increase Climate Activism

Abstract

Using an online experiment with a national sample, this study tests the effects of political efficacy messages on two types of climate-related political participation via the discrete emotions of hope, fear, and anger and compares these effects across ideological groups. Relative to a message that discusses only negative climate impacts, messages that emphasize the internal, external, or response efficacy of political actions to address climate change are found to influence hope and fear but not anger, and these effects vary by political ideology. Furthermore, exposure to efficacy information indirectly increases participation via hope—even, in some cases, among conservatives.

Against the odds: Hope as an antecedent of support for climate change action

“…Similarly, hope and concern about a changing climate were both linked to pro-environmental behaviour amongst children (Stevenson & Peterson, 2015), suggesting hope is not a denial of the problem, but may rather be grounded in the (uncertain) reality of the situation. Some evidence suggests that efficacy information can increase climate-related political participation via hope (Feldman & Hart, 2016) and that feelings of hope predict support for climate policies (Smith & Leiserowitz, 2014). Yet, some studies have shown that despite achieving an increase in hope with either hopeful (Chadwick, 2015) or optimistic (Hornsey & Fielding, 2016) climate messages, this hope did not translate into an increase in climate-mitigating behavioural intentions.…”

“…The inconsistent results could be due to the different theoretical approaches to hope in these studies. Some studies lean towards more expectation-based approaches (Ojala, 2015;Stevenson & Peterson, 2015), while others treat hope as a discrete emotion amongst others with minimal theoretical specification (Feldman & Hart, 2016), which makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the role of hope.…”

A Tutorial on Testing, Visualizing, and Probing an Interaction Involving a Multicategorical Variable in Linear Regression Analysis

“…Importantly, many research designs involve multicategorical variables, such as when an experimenter creates or collects three or more versions of a communication-related stimulus that vary on some manipulated dimension or feature (e.g., Feldman & Hart, 2016;Hurley, Jensen, Weaver, & Dixon, 2015;Niederdeppe, Shapiro, Kim, Bartolo, & Porticella, 2014), or when the effects of communication are measured in people who differ in (for example) ethnicity or political party identification (e.g., Habush, Warren, & Benuto, 2012).…”

Translating policy transparency into policy understanding and policy support: Evidence from a survey experiment

“…Perceived understanding affords citizens a sense of self‐efficacy and, as such, motivates their decision to act upon objective policy understanding (see Bandura ). Accordingly, greater perceived policy understanding plays an important role in translating (latent) policy attitudes that result from objective understanding into shows of policy support or discontent (Zimmerman ; Feldman and Hart ). While objective and perceived understanding can move independently (see Kruger and Dunning ), determinants that positively influence objective understanding tend to also positively influence perceived understanding (Sweller ; Rennekamp ).…”

“…Perceived understanding affords citizens a sense of self-efficacy and, as such, motivates their decision to act upon objective policy understanding (see Bandura 1997). Accordingly, greater perceived policy understanding plays an important role in translating (latent) policy attitudes that result from objective understanding into shows of policy support or discontent (Zimmerman 2000;Feldman and Hart 2016).…”