IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/riskan/v38y2018i3p585-602.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is There Any Hope? How Climate Change News Imagery and Text Influence Audience Emotions and Support for Climate Mitigation Policies

Author

Listed:
  • Lauren Feldman
  • P. Sol Hart

Abstract

Using a national sample, this study experimentally tests the effects of news visuals and texts that emphasize either the causes and impacts of climate change or actions that can be taken to address climate change. We test the effects of variations in text and imagery on discrete emotions (i.e., hope, fear, and anger) and, indirectly, on support for climate mitigation policies. Political ideology is examined as a moderator. The findings indicate that news images and texts that focus on climate‐oriented actions can increase hope and, in the case of texts, decrease fear and anger, and these effects generally hold across the ideological spectrum. In turn, the influence of emotions on policy support depends on ideology: Hope and fear increase support for climate policies for all ideological groups but particularly conservatives, whereas anger polarizes the opinions of liberals and conservatives. Implications for climate change communication that appeals to emotions are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Lauren Feldman & P. Sol Hart, 2018. "Is There Any Hope? How Climate Change News Imagery and Text Influence Audience Emotions and Support for Climate Mitigation Policies," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(3), pages 585-602, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:38:y:2018:i:3:p:585-602
    DOI: 10.1111/risa.12868
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12868
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/risa.12868?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anneloes L. Meijnders & Cees J. H. Midden & Henk A. M. Wilke, 2001. "Role of Negative Emotion in Communication about CO2 Risks," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(5), pages 955-955, October.
    2. 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.
    3. Paul Slovic & Melissa L. Finucane & Ellen Peters & Donald G. MacGregor, 2004. "Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(2), pages 311-322, April.
    4. Hang Lu & Jonathon Schuldt, 2015. "Exploring the role of incidental emotions in support for climate change policy," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 131(4), pages 719-726, August.
    5. Michael MacKuen & Jennifer Wolak & Luke Keele & George E. Marcus, 2010. "Civic Engagements: Resolute Partisanship or Reflective Deliberation," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(2), pages 440-458, April.
    6. Nicholas Smith & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2014. "The Role of Emotion in Global Warming Policy Support and Opposition," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(5), pages 937-948, May.
    7. Richard C. Stedman, 2004. "Risk and Climate Change: Perceptions of Key Policy Actors in Canada," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(5), pages 1395-1406, October.
    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. Syalie Liu & Sacha Altay & Hugo Mercier, 2022. "Being green or being nice? People are more likely to share nicer but potentially less impactful green messages," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 1-14, September.
    2. Marilou Jobin & Michael Siegrist, 2020. "Support for the Deployment of Climate Engineering: A Comparison of Ten Different Technologies," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(5), pages 1058-1078, May.
    3. Septianto, Felix & Lee, Michael S.W., 2020. "Emotional responses to plastic waste: Matching image and message framing in encouraging consumers to reduce plastic consumption," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 18-29.
    4. Ran Duan & Christian Bombara, 2022. "Visualizing climate change: the role of construal level, emotional valence, and visual literacy," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 1-22, January.
    5. Joshua Ettinger & Peter Walton & James Painter & Thomas DiBlasi, 2021. "Climate of hope or doom and gloom? Testing the climate change hope vs. fear communications debate through online videos," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 1-19, January.
    6. Jerome Ballet & Damien Bazin & Emmanuel Petit, 2023. "The Ecology of Fear and Climate Change: A Pragmatist Point of View," Environmental Values, , vol. 32(1), pages 5-24, February.
    7. Lauren Feldman & P. Sol Hart, 2021. "Upping the ante? The effects of “emergency” and “crisis” framing in climate change news," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 169(1), pages 1-20, November.
    8. Alfi Rahman & Muzayin Nazaruddin & Nurul Fajar Januriyadi & Muzailin Affan, 2024. "Cross-generational Smong narratives in Aceh’s tsunami resilience," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 943-970, September.
    9. Nia King & Katherine E. Bishop-Williams & Sabrina Beauchamp & James D. Ford & Lea Berrang-Ford & Ashlee Cunsolo & IHACC Research Team & Sherilee L. Harper, 2019. "How do Canadian media report climate change impacts on health? A newspaper review," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 581-596, March.
    10. Katherine M. Crosman & Ann Bostrom & Adam L. Hayes, 2019. "Efficacy Foundations for Risk Communication: How People Think About Reducing the Risks of Climate Change," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(10), pages 2329-2347, October.
    11. Zhang, Xiadan & Gong, Xiushuang & Jiang, Jing, 2021. "Dump or recycle? Nostalgia and consumer recycling behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 594-603.
    12. Robin G. Veldman & Dara M. Wald & Sarah B. Mills & David A. M. Peterson, 2021. "Who are American evangelical Protestants and why do they matter for US climate policy?," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(2), March.

    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. Yingying Sun & Ziqiang Han, 2018. "Climate Change Risk Perception in Taiwan: Correlation with Individual and Societal Factors," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, January.
    2. Meredith Frances Dobbie & Rebekah Ruth Brown, 2014. "A Framework for Understanding Risk Perception, Explored from the Perspective of the Water Practitioner," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(2), pages 294-308, February.
    3. Nicholas Smith & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2014. "The Role of Emotion in Global Warming Policy Support and Opposition," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(5), pages 937-948, May.
    4. Anne K. Armstrong & Marianne E. Krasny, 2020. "Tracing Paths from Research to Practice in Climate Change Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-21, June.
    5. 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.
    6. Sabine Roeser, 2012. "Risk Communication, Public Engagement, and Climate Change: A Role for Emotions," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(6), pages 1033-1040, June.
    7. Michael Siegrist & Joseph Árvai, 2020. "Risk Perception: Reflections on 40 Years of Research," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(S1), pages 2191-2206, November.
    8. Moshe Maor & Tereza Capelos, 2023. "Symposium: Affect and emotions in policy dynamics," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 56(3), pages 439-448, September.
    9. Stephanie Jean Tsang & Xinyan Zhao & Yi-Ru Regina Chen, 2021. "Assessing Mechanisms Underlying the Sharing of Official and Unofficial Information during a Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(24), pages 1-15, December.
    10. Özcureci Berker & Tuğrul Tuğba, 2023. "The Interplay Between Risk Framing, Attitude toward Policy, Negative Affect and Hard Policy Support," Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, Sciendo, vol. 17(1), pages 122-128, July.
    11. Tai-Yi Yu & Tai-Kuei Yu, 2017. "The Moderating Effects of Students’ Personality Traits on Pro-Environmental Behavioral Intentions in Response to Climate Change," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-20, November.
    12. Raman Kachurka & Michał W. Krawczyk & Joanna Rachubik, 2021. "Persuasive messages will not raise COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Evidence from a nation-wide online experiment," Working Papers 2021-07, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. James K. Hammitt, 2020. "Valuing mortality risk in the time of COVID-19," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 129-154, October.
    16. Huaiyuan Zhai & Mengjie Li & Shengyue Hao & Mingli Chen & Lingchen Kong, 2021. "How Does Metro Maintenance Staff’s Risk Perception Influence Safety Citizenship Behavior—The Mediating Role of Safety Attitude," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-20, May.
    17. Scorgie, Fiona & Khoza, Nomhle & Delany-Moretlwe, Sinead & Velloza, Jennifer & Mangxilana, Nomvuyo & Atujuna, Millicent & Chitukuta, Miria & Matambanadzo, Kudzai V. & Hosek, Sybil & Makhale, Lerato & , 2021. "Narrative sexual histories and perceptions of HIV risk among young women taking PrEP in southern Africa: Findings from a novel participatory method," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 270(C).
    18. Ling Jia & Queena K. Qian & Frits Meijer & Henk Visscher, 2020. "Stakeholders’ Risk Perception: A Perspective for Proactive Risk Management in Residential Building Energy Retrofits in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-25, April.
    19. Kang, Min Jung & Park, Heejun, 2011. "Impact of experience on government policy toward acceptance of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Korea," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3465-3475, June.
    20. Branden B. Johnson, 2017. "Explaining Americans’ responses to dread epidemics: an illustration with Ebola in late 2014," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(10), pages 1338-1357, October.

    More about this item

    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:wly:riskan:v:38:y:2018:i:3:p:585-602. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924 .

    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.