Moral Frames and Climate Change Policy Attitudes

Alexander W. Severson and Eric A. Coleman

Social Science Quarterly, 2015, vol. 96, issue 5, 1277-1290

Abstract: type="main">

This article compares the effects of various climate change issue frames (deontological-moral, empirical-scientific, and economic) on support for climate change mitigation policies.

Using an issue-framing survey experiment conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we assess framing effects on climate change policy support using ordinary least squares regression.

We find mixed evidence regarding frame effectiveness. Religious moral frames and economic efficiency frames are ineffective, whereas scientific frames, secular moral frames, and economic equity frames are effective at increasing overall policy support. Additionally, the positive science frame and economic equity frame reduce the ideological divide in climate policy support.

The effects of issue framing on climate policy support are mixed. Frames that we expected conservatives to be responsive to (religious morality; economic efficiency) fail to change support for climate policy. Frames that emphasize science, secular morality, and economy equity have the potential to increase public support for climate change policies.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ssqu.12159 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:bla:socsci:v:96:y:2015:i:5:p:1277-1290

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().