Their Economy and Our Health: Communicating Climate Change to the Divided American Public

Haoran Chu and Janet Yang
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Haoran Chu: Department of Public Relations, College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
Janet Yang: Department of Communication, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 21, 1-17

Abstract: Climate change poses severe economic and public health threats to societies around the world. However, little is known about how selectively emphasizing its impacts on different issues and in different locations influence public engagement in climate change mitigation. Utilizing an experimental survey with adult participants, this study investigates the effect of issue framing and distance framing on risk perception and policy support related to climate change. The impacts of political ideology, environmental value, and belief in climate science on message effect are also examined. Based on the results of ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) and OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression, we found that compared with the economy frame, the public health frame led to greater polarization in risk perception and policy support between liberals and conservatives, and these relationships were mediated by environmental value and belief in climate science. Similarly, distance framing also increased ideological polarization in risk perception and policy support.

Keywords: climate change; psychological distance; issue framing; motivated reasoning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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