You vs. us: framing adaptation behavior in terms of private or social benefits

Hilary Byerly Flint (), Paul Cada, Patricia A. Champ, Jamie Gomez, Danny Margoles, James Meldrum and Hannah Brenkert-Smith
Additional contact information
Hilary Byerly Flint: University of Colorado Boulder
Paul Cada: Vail Fire and Emergency Services
Patricia A. Champ: Rocky Mountain Research Station, U.S.D.A. Forest Service
Jamie Gomez: West Region Wildfire Council
Danny Margoles: Dolores Watershed Resilience Forest Collaborative
Hannah Brenkert-Smith: University of Colorado Boulder

Climatic Change, 2022, vol. 174, issue 1, No 11, 17 pages

Abstract: Abstract Private actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change may have benefits to both the individual and society. In some cases, an individual may be motivated by appeals that highlight benefits to others, rather than to oneself. We test whether such prosocial framing influences information-seeking behavior to address wildfire risk among homeowners. In a field experiment across ten communities in western Colorado, property owners (n = 2977) received a postcard from their local fire department highlighting the impact of risk mitigation to either “your property” (private benefits) or “our community” (social benefits). The postcard directed recipients to visit a personalized webpage on wildfire risk. Overall, 10.5% of property owners visited their personalized risk webpage. There was little difference in webpage visitation between those who received the social (11.3%) rather than the private (9.7%) benefits message (χ2 = 1.74, p = 0.19). However, response may depend on a property owner’s relationship to the community. Those who reside within the community (as opposed to out-of-town owners) or who were in an evacuation zone during a recent wildfire were more likely to visit their webpages after receiving the social benefits message. How homeowners view their contributions to shared risk and whether simple changes in messaging influence prosocial behavior can inform efforts to address climate-exacerbated hazards.

Keywords: Wildfire; Field experiment; Risk; Communication; Prosocial behavior; Climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-022-03400-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:174:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-022-03400-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-022-03400-4

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().