IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/marpol/v57y2015icp45-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Communicating about marine disease: The effects of message frames on policy support

Author

Listed:
  • McComas, Katherine A.
  • Schuldt, Jonathon P.
  • Burge, Colleen A.
  • Roh, Sungjong

Abstract

Oceans are suffering from the dual climatic pressures of warming temperatures and acidification, increasing the presence of disease risks that affect marine organisms and public health. Through a randomized field-based experiment, this study examines the effects of communicating about risks to marine organisms and public health on people’s support for policies aimed at mitigating those risks as a function of different message frames. To maximize the salience of these issues, participants were recruited from ferry passengers (N=543) in the San Juan Islands of Washington State in the summer of 2013 and randomized to read one of four fictitious news articles detailing the increased incidence of deadly bacteria (Vibrio) in oysters in the Pacific Northwest. Depending on condition, the article attributed the causes to global warming or climate change and the consequences primarily to oyster health or public health—frames that recent research suggests can influence how the public responds to environmental messages. Results showed high levels of support for marine policy and high concern about the prevalence of marine disease risks across the sample (i.e., irrespective of framing condition). Analysis of individual differences suggested that participants with lower biocentric (i.e., environmental) values were more supportive of marine policy when exposed to the article highlighting consequences to oyster health from global warming, an effect that was fully mediated (or explained) by level of self-reported concern. The results demonstrate the importance of communication about marine disease in showing how subtle changes in message frames can elicit differential support for marine policy.

Suggested Citation

  • McComas, Katherine A. & Schuldt, Jonathon P. & Burge, Colleen A. & Roh, Sungjong, 2015. "Communicating about marine disease: The effects of message frames on policy support," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 45-52.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:marpol:v:57:y:2015:i:c:p:45-52
    DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2015.02.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X15000470
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.marpol.2015.02.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Charles S. Taber & Milton Lodge, 2006. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(3), pages 755-769, July.
    2. Chong, Dennis & Druckman, James N., 2007. "Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(4), pages 637-655, November.
    3. Teresa Myers & Matthew Nisbet & Edward Maibach & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2012. "A public health frame arouses hopeful emotions about climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 1105-1112, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dominic Balog‐Way & Katherine McComas & John Besley, 2020. "The Evolving Field of Risk Communication," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(S1), pages 2240-2262, November.

    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. Rogers, Todd & Nickerson, David W., 2013. "Can Inaccurate Beliefs about Incumbents be Changed? And Can Reframing Change Votes?," Working Paper Series rwp13-018, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Nikoleta Yordanova & Mariyana Angelova & Roni Lehrer & Moritz Osnabrügge & Sander Renes, 2020. "Swaying citizen support for EU membership: Evidence from a survey experiment of German voters," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 429-450, September.
    3. Laura N. Rickard, 2021. "Pragmatic and (or) Constitutive? On the Foundations of Contemporary Risk Communication Research," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 466-479, March.
    4. Shane P Singh & Meili Swanson, 2017. "How issue frames shape beliefs about the importance of climate change policy across ideological and partisan groups," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(7), pages 1-14, July.
    5. Aaron Deslatte, 2019. "A bayesian approach for behavioral public administration: Citizen assessments of local government sustainability performance," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 2(1).
    6. Ting Liu & Nick Shryane & Mark Elliot, 2022. "Attitudes to climate change risk: classification of and transitions in the UK population between 2012 and 2020," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Erika Franklin Fowler & Sarah E. Gollust, 2015. "The Content and Effect of Politicized Health Controversies," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 658(1), pages 155-171, March.
    8. Lucio Baccaro & Björn Bremer & Erik Neimanns, 2021. "Till austerity do us part? A survey experiment on support for the euro in Italy," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 401-423, September.
    9. Baccaro, Lucio & Bremer, Björn & Neimanns, Erik, 2020. "Is the euro up for grabs? Evidence from a survey experiment," MPIfG Discussion Paper 20/10, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    10. Thomas J. Leeper, 2016. "How does treatment self-selection affect inferences about political communication?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67604, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Haoran Chu & Janet Yang, 2020. "Their Economy and Our Health: Communicating Climate Change to the Divided American Public," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-17, October.
    12. Scott Williamson & Mashail Malik, 2021. "Contesting narratives of repression: Experimental evidence from Sisi’s Egypt," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 58(5), pages 1018-1033, September.
    13. Bailey, Michael & Hopkins, Daniel J. & Rogers, Todd, 2013. "Unresponsive and Unpersuaded: The Unintended Consequences of Voter Persuasion Efforts," Working Paper Series rwp13-034, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    14. Tetsuro Kobayashi & Fumiaki Taka & Takahisa Suzuki, 2021. "Can “Googling” correct misbelief? Cognitive and affective consequences of online search," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-16, September.
    15. Joseph A Hamm & Corwin Smidt & Roger C Mayer, 2019. "Understanding the psychological nature and mechanisms of political trust," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-20, May.
    16. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    17. Michael Carolan, 2020. "Filtering perceptions of climate change and biotechnology: values and views among Colorado farmers and ranchers," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 121-139, March.
    18. Barrera, Oscar & Guriev, Sergei & Henry, Emeric & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2020. "Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    19. Stefano Carattini & Andrea Baranzini & Philippe Thalmann & Frédéric Varone & Frank Vöhringer, 2017. "Green Taxes in a Post-Paris World: Are Millions of Nays Inevitable?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(1), pages 97-128, September.
    20. Faia, Ester & Fuster, Andreas & Pezone, Vincenzo & Zafar, Basit, 2021. "Biases in information selection and processing: Survey evidence from the pandemic," SAFE Working Paper Series 307, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.

    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:marpol:v:57:y:2015:i:c:p:45-52. 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/marpol .

    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.