Improving Climate Change Acceptance Among U.S. Conservatives Through Value-Based Message Targeting
Abstract
Although prior research has identified communication strategies for reducing climate change skepticism, recent research suggests such approaches can backfire. To explore this issue, we report on a preliminary study investigating two prominent messaging styles: consensus and targeted messages. While consensus messaging did not produce significant effects, targeted messages emphasizing free market solutions to climate change were effective at improving conservatives’ climate change acceptance. Furthermore, the inclusion of consensus information did not improve or diminish the effects of the targeted messages. These findings underscore the utility of targeted messaging in improving climate change acceptance among political conservatives.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Several studies found that consensus messages did not change people's own beliefs about climate change or their attitudes toward climate action.
“Several studies found that consensus messages did not change people's own beliefs about climate change or their attitudes toward climate action (Deryugina and Shurchkov, 2016;Dixon et al., 2017;Bolsen and Druckman, 2018).”
From Factual belief polarization between Democrats and Republicans: source or epiphenomenon of ideological and affective polarization? (2024) · cites this paper as Dixon et al., 2017
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 25 · Cited by 222
- Authors
- Dixon, G., Hmielowski, J., & Ma, Y.
- Affiliations
- The Ohio State University (US)
- Washington State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Dixon, Graham
- Venue
- Science Communication
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2017-06-21
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 520-534
- ISSN
- 0164-0259 (ISSN-L)
- 1075-5470
- 1552-8545
- OpenAlex
- W2655469294
- Cited by
- 222
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 65 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 36.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science Communication (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Keywords
- climate change acceptance, climate change skepticism, climate change communication, message framing, backfire effect
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
