Speaking in Frames: How Accounting for Audience Attributes Can Enhance Communication About Pressing Environmental Issues

Beall, Justin

ABSTRACT: In an era of unprecedented global change, there is an urgent need to investigate ways to engender public support for pressing environmental issues. Communicating with the public is one key strategy for fostering pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. However, such communications can fail, or even backfire, when they are not designed to resonate with the existing attitudes, worldviews, or motivations of an audience. Message framing can help ensure that communications are effective among audiences with diverse ideologies. Framing theory suggests that the way a communication is presented will influence how the audience processes information within the message. There is a need to better understand how different framings of global environmental issues compare to others, and furthermore, to understand which framings are more effective based on audience characteristics. Thus, the aim of this dissertation is to examine how framings interact with audience attributes surrounding three pressing environmental issues: zoonotic disease, climate change, and overtourism in protected areas. First, the risk of zoonotic disease emergence is increasing as human activity continues to transform the planet, and there is a need to create support among the public for policy that will help address this risk. To this end, I examined the influence of cultural framing on the perceived validity of a scientific communication related to the wildlife origin of COVID-19 using an experimental approach with a random sample of the American public. Relative to the control, conservatives found a communication more convincing when it was framed around technological solutions to manage the risk of disease emergence, but this framing created backlash among liberals. I did not identify an effect for the communication framing focused on expanding wildlife refuges to protect wildlife. Second, the current and future impacts of climate change underscore the need to explore ways to generate support for climate adaptation and mitigation among the public. To do this, I explored how emphasis framing interacted with gain-loss framing to influence the perceived risk of climate change and the perceived validity of a climate communication using an experimental design with a random sample of the American public. I examined interactions with political ideology and cultural worldviews for each dependent variable: perceived study validity (how convincing they found a scientific communication they received) and perceived risk of climate change. In all cases, liberal reported higher levels of perceived validity and risk associated with climate change. But framing also mattered. Economic gain framings and public health gain framings were the least polarizing frames, whereas environmental gain framings were the most polarizing in terms of both perceived study validity and perceived risk of climate change. Third, overtourism – a phenomenon where the number of tourists exceeds the capacity of a destination – creates environmental, social, and economic impacts within protected areas around the world. There is a need to understand if marketing materials can shift visitation away from overcrowded destinations to alternative sites with more capacity for visitors. In an overcrowded destination (Great Smoky Mountains National Park), I distributed three brochures to visitors to market the Cherohala Skyway – a nearby destination with more capacity. I found that, relative to a control with no motivational framing, both a brochure with nature-based motivational framing and a brochure with social media motivational framing were more effective for enhancing the appeal of the Cherohala Skyway and for intention to visit the Skyway if GRSM became too crowded, but not for influencing intention to visit the Skyway on a return trip to the area. Together, these findings contribute to the environmental communication literature by examining how framing interacts with audience cognitions for three pressing environmental issues. Researchers and practitioners of environmental communication can use these findings to influence public support for addressing environmental issues and foster engagement in pro-environmental behaviors