IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i10p5541-5549.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The importance of message framing for providing information about sustainability and environmental aspects of energy

Author

Listed:
  • Van de Velde, Liesbeth
  • Verbeke, Wim
  • Popp, Michael
  • Van Huylenbroeck, Guido

Abstract

With a looming energy crisis, energy conservation and attention to environmental problems are warranted. The transport sector experiences great challenges to introduce more environmental friendly renewable energy like biofuels. The majority of the Belgian people are asking for more information about this issue. Because individuals are sensitive to how information is presented, the choice of the message frame can significantly influence attitudes and behavioural intention. Because of the strengthening effect on both concern and PCE, our findings suggest that for the prevention of energy and environmental problems and the promotion of a more sustainable and environmental friendly energy consumption not the gravity of these problems and the possible disadvantages but the possibilities to overcome these problems (e.g. reduction of energy use, environmental friendly energy sources) have to be stressed. Men, higher educated people, people between 35 and 54 years old and people with the most pro-environmental attitude are less affected by the message frame, while the choice of the frame is more important when addressing women, people younger than 35 and older than 55 years, lower educated and less pro-environmental people.

Suggested Citation

  • Van de Velde, Liesbeth & Verbeke, Wim & Popp, Michael & Van Huylenbroeck, Guido, 2010. "The importance of message framing for providing information about sustainability and environmental aspects of energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5541-5549, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:10:p:5541-5549
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00345-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roberts, James A., 1996. "Green Consumers in the 1990s: Profile and Implications for Advertising," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 217-231, July.
    2. Gossling, Stefan & Kunkel, Timo & Schumacher, Kim & Heck, Nadine & Birkemeyer, Johannes & Froese, Jens & Naber, Nils & Schliermann, Elke, 2005. "A target group-specific approach to "green" power retailing: students as consumers of renewable energy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 69-83, February.
    3. Wim Verbeke, 2005. "Agriculture and the food industry in the information age," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 32(3), pages 347-368, September.
    4. Zaichkowsky, Judith Lynne, 1985. "Measuring the Involvement Construct," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 12(3), pages 341-352, December.
    5. Levin, Irwin P. & Schneider, Sandra L. & Gaeth, Gary J., 1998. "All Frames Are Not Created Equal: A Typology and Critical Analysis of Framing Effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 149-188, November.
    6. Aickin, M. & Gensler, H., 1996. "Adjusting for multiple testing when reporting research results: The Bonferroni vs Holm methods," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 86(5), pages 726-728.
    7. Levin, Irwin P & Gaeth, Gary J, 1988. "How Consumers Are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information before and after Consuming the Product," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 15(3), pages 374-378, December.
    8. Van de Velde, Liesbeth & Verbeke, Wim & Popp, Michael & Buysse, Jeroen & Van Huylenbroeck, Guido, 2009. "Perceived importance of fuel characteristics and its match with consumer beliefs about biofuels in Belgium," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 3183-3193, August.
    9. Levin, Irwin P. & Gaeth, Gary J. & Schreiber, Judy & Lauriola, Marco, 2002. "A New Look at Framing Effects: Distribution of Effect Sizes, Individual Differences, and Independence of Types of Effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 411-429, May.
    10. Krishnamurthy, Parthasarathy & Carter, Patrick & Blair, Edward, 2001. "Attribute Framing and Goal Framing Effects in Health Decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 382-399, July.
    11. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1986. "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 251-278, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Freling, Traci H. & Vincent, Leslie H. & Henard, David H., 2014. "When not to accentuate the positive: Re-examining valence effects in attribute framing," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 95-109.
    2. Rahman, Arifur & Crouch, Geoffrey I. & Laing, Jennifer H., 2018. "Tourists' temporal booking decisions: A study of the effect of contextual framing," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 55-68.
    3. Jain, Gaurav & Gaeth, Gary J. & Nayakankuppam, Dhananjay & Levin, Irwin P., 2020. "Revisiting attribute framing: The impact of number roundedness on framing," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 109-119.
    4. Yang Li & Dandan Yang & Yingying Liu, 2021. "The Effect of Message Framing on Consumers’ Intentions to Purchase Recycling-Aiding Products in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-17, June.
    5. Yi-Fen Chen & Shi-Han Chang, 2016. "The online framing effect: the moderating role of warning, brand familiarity, and product type," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 355-374, September.
    6. Robert C. Bird & Vivek Soundararajan, 2020. "The Role of Precontractual Signals in Creating Sustainable Global Supply Chains," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 81-94, June.
    7. Martin Baekgaard & Nicola Belle & Søren Serritzlew & Mariafrancesca Sicilia & Ileana Steccolini, 2019. "Performance information in politics: How framing, format, and rhetoric matter to politicians’ preferences," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 2(2).
    8. van Buiten, Marc & Keren, Gideon, 2009. "Speaker-listener incompatibility: Joint and separate processing in risky choice framing," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 106-115, January.
    9. Mark J Hurlstone & Stephan Lewandowsky & Ben R Newell & Brittany Sewell, 2014. "The Effect of Framing and Normative Messages in Building Support for Climate Policies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-19, December.
    10. Kim, Jungkeun & Kim, Jae-Eun & Marshall, Roger, 2014. "Search for the underlying mechanism of framing effects in multi-alternative and multi-attribute decision situations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 378-385.
    11. Delgado, Laura & Shealy, Tripp, 2018. "Opportunities for greater energy efficiency in government facilities by aligning decision structures with advances in behavioral science," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 3952-3961.
    12. Dharshing, Samdruk & Hille, Stefanie Lena & Wüstenhagen, Rolf, 2017. "The Influence of Political Orientation on the Strength and Temporal Persistence of Policy Framing Effects," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 295-305.
    13. Kuo, Ying-Feng & Lin, Cathy S. & Liu, Li-Te, 2022. "The effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions in reward-based crowdfunding," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    14. Xingbo Li & Shalini Sarin Jain & Yiqin Alicia Shen & Shailendra Pratap Jain, 2021. "Power and Message Framing: the Case of Comparative Advertising," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 8(1), pages 41-49, June.
    15. repec:cup:judgdm:v:9:y:2014:i:3:p:274-286 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Irwin P. Levin & Elaine A. Bossard & Gary J. Gaeth & Haoyang Yan, 2014. "The combined role of task, child's age and individual differences in understanding decision processes," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 9(3), pages 274-286, May.
    17. Nisar, Tahir M. & Prabhakar, Guru, 2018. "Trains and Twitter: Firm generated content, consumer relationship management and message framing," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 318-334.
    18. McCaffery, Edward J. & Baron, Jonathan, 2004. "Framing and taxation: Evaluation of tax policies involving household composition," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 679-705, December.
    19. L. Balbo & M.L. Gavard-Perret, 2010. "L'utilisation du cadrage des conséquences au sein des messages de sante publique : bilan et perspectives pour la recherche en marketing," Post-Print halshs-00534782, HAL.
    20. Mathur, Pragya & Jain, Shailendra Pratap & Hsieh, Meng-Hua & Lindsey, Charles D. & Maheswaran, Durairaj, 2013. "The influence of implicit theories and message frame on the persuasiveness of disease prevention and detection advocacies," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 141-151.
    21. Suzanne Bartholomae & D. Elizabeth Kiss & Jesse B. Jurgenson & Barbara O’Neill & Sheri Lokken Worthy & Jinhee Kim, 2019. "Framing the Human Capital Investment Decision: Examining Gender Bias in Student Loan Borrowing," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 132-145, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Energy Information Message framing;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:10:p:5541-5549. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.