Climate change messaging: Effective for awareness, insufficient for action, finds study

Such messaging, especially when highlighting scientific agreement on the climate crisis, was more effective for audiences who had lower awareness and misperceptions about climate change 

People across the globe are experiencing the climate crisis in various forms – from increased floods, cyclones, wildfires to declining crop productivity and droughts. But when it comes to awareness-induced action on climate change by the people, there’s still a lot left to be desired. This is where effective messaging about how human-caused climate change is real can play a critical role. 

An experiment, published in Nature Human Behaviour, targeted more than 10,000 participants spread across 27 countries, and broadcast two messages: a classic one on the reality of human-caused climate change, and another message additionally highlighting scientific agreement that climate change is a crisis. 

The experiment found that scientific consensus messaging is an effective, non-polarising tool for changing misperceptions, beliefs and worry across different audiences.

It was found that while the latter message did not have an additional effect, both messages were more effective for audiences who had lower awareness about climate change and higher misperceptions. This included those who are politically right-leaning and don’t trust climate scientists as much, according to the study.

The importance of effective messaging

There is a 97-99.9% consensus in scientific circles that human action has brought about climate change. But this does not translate into the general populace’s beliefs, according to data from six European countries, found the study. About 65% people in England believe climate change is human-induced, and 71% do so in Ireland.

While public awareness about climate change leads to genuine action, or at least support for action, a lack of awareness, misperceptions and low belief in scientists’ warnings have sizable negative effects, the study found. 

People who underestimate scientific consensus on climate change are less likely to believe in the human-caused climate crisis, which leads to less support for public action on climate change, according to the study.

In fact, past research proves that scientific consensus messaging is more effective on individuals whose perceptions about human-induced climate change were lower. So, scientific consensus messages might be less effective when individuals are more familiar with the message, cited the study.

But most of the past evidence about climate change consensus among general people is based on rich, developed and democratic English-speaking Western countries such as the US, Australia, barring Germany and Japan. But since the climate crisis is a global phenomenon, with less developed, poorer countries in the Global South getting more affected, it’s important to bring these countries into the messaging loop. This is what this experiment did, extending its target group to 27 countries across six continents – Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and North and South America.

Spreading the word about climate

According to the study, people’s belief that climate change has primarily been caused by the human race became strong after being exposed to the classic message. It also found strong evidence that the classic message increases people’s belief that climate change is indeed a crisis.

The updated message did not have any additional benefit when it came to increasing or affecting people’s belief that it’s a crisis, or added worry or support for action. However, their perception that climate change is indeed a crisis was cemented more firmly with the updated message.

The study found that scientific consensus messages on climate change can reduce consensus misperceptions and produce small shifts in climate change beliefs and worry, but does not directly extend to support for public action. Especially, if it’s a one-time messaging intervention.

Also, adding that more scientists agree that climate change is a crisis doesn’t lead to different results, as individuals have already been exposed to the same message. The study noted that there needs to be more effective ways of communicating that climate change is indeed a crisis. 

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