The appeal of climate program framing depends on climate beliefs: a conjoint survey experiment among US agricultural producers

Despite increasingly severe climate change impacts to US agriculture, a majority of agricultural producers are skeptical of anthropogenic climate change, limiting climate action in a sector with considerable potential for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Research has suggested that highlighting the co-benefits of climate action can increase climate change engagement, yet the efficacy of doing so has not been tested in climate skeptical agricultural communities. We first administered a conjoint survey experiment (n = 853) to test if agricultural producers prefer public climate change programs that emphasize climate co-benefits and then conducted a latent class analysis to measure how variation in climate perceptions affects program preference. Programs that emphasized co-benefits had higher levels of support overall; economic co-benefits elicited a stronger positive response to climate programs than social and environmental co-benefits. However, co-benefits framing was ineffective for the most climate skeptical producers. Conversely, the most climate concerned producers were strongly motivated by direct climate benefits, rather than co-benefits. Critically, our study illustrates the nuances of co-benefit efficacy to increase climate action among climate-skeptical populations. These results further our understanding of how climate co-benefits promote climate engagement and can be used to improve the design of climate programs.Despite evidence suggesting climate co-benefits can effectively promote climate policy support, the efficacy of climate co-benefits is moderated by climate beliefs.Economic co-benefits increased support for climate programs among US agricultural producers, even among those who are doubtful about climate change.Emphasis on the climate benefits of climate programs motivate those producers most alarmed by climate change while alienating most other segments.Regardless of climate beliefs, producers strongly supported market-based climate programs and programs with financial or technical assistance for carbon sequestration or carbon offset payments.Policymakers’ ability to engage climate skeptical populations in climate mitigation and adaptation may be improved through targeted campaign strategies using segmentation.