Comparing the effects of climate change labelling on reactions of the Taiwanese public

Li-San Hung () and Mucahid Mustafa Bayrak
Additional contact information
Li-San Hung: National Taiwan Normal University
Mucahid Mustafa Bayrak: National Taiwan Normal University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Scientists and the media are increasingly using the terms ‘climate emergency’ or ‘climate crisis’ to urge timely responses from the public and private sectors to combat the irreversible consequences of climate change. However, whether the latest trend in climate change labelling can result in stronger climate change risk perceptions in the public is unclear. Here we used survey data collected from 1,892 individuals across Taiwan in 2019 to compare the public’s reaction to a series of questions regarding climate change beliefs, communication, and behavioural intentions under two labels: ‘climate change’ and ‘climate crisis.’ The respondents had very similar responses to the questions using the two labels. However, we observed labelling effects for specific subgroups, with some questions using the climate crisis label actually leading to backlash effects compared with the response when using the climate change label. Our results suggest that even though the two labels provoke similar reactions from the general public, on a subgroup level, some backlash effects may become apparent. For this reason, the label ‘climate crisis’ should be strategically chosen.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19979-0 Abstract (text/html)

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:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-19979-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19979-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

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