While scientists agree that human-caused climate change is a critical issue for the 21st century, the U.S. public remains divided, often across political lines. This creates a complicated communication environment as agricultural and environmental scientists look to mitigate the effects of climate change. Previous research has demonstrated how political ideology is a strong predictor of climate change beliefs. However, new research investigates what components of political ideology may help explain the current climate change communication situation.
In a recently published journal article in the Journal of Applied Communications, Katie Sanders, Kristin Gibson, and Alexa Lamm, science communication researchers in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication, investigated the relationship between political ideology, perceived government control, climate change knowledge, and climate change perceptions. While many other scholars have looked at politics and climate change, the current research looks at specific components of political ideology to help dissect the underlying cognition behind people’s message interaction around climate change.
Specifically, perceptions of government autonomy-support/government control was the variable of interest. The government autonomy-support perspective includes feelings that the government allows citizens the:
- Choice to engage in environmental mitigation strategies
- Freedom to make one’s own decisions about the environment
- Choice to participate in governmental environmental programs
Conversely, governmental control perspective includes feelings that the government:
- Pressures people to adopt environmental behaviors
- Imposes environmental strategies
- Forces people to adopt environmental behaviors
- Makes me feel guilty when I do nothing for the environment
The government autonomy-support/control scale was adapted from Lavergne et al. (2010). Overall, adding the variable of government autonomy-support/control to political ideology increased researchers’ ability to predict climate change perceptions and knowledge among respondents. Results showed that government control perspectives significantly predicted climate change knowledge for more conservative respondents, but only significantly predicted liberal (rather than very liberal) participant knowledge of climate change.
Communications practitioners looking to increase agreement with pro-environmental climate change messaging should use government autonomy-support frames to increase public support of climate change policy. For example, messages targeting more conservative audiences might emphasize free market solutions to climate change.
For more information, read the article here!
