2018 Conference

Individual Paper Presentation

Partisan division on climate change has led to a paralysis in the policy process, particularly in the United States. To increase support for climate change policies across partisan lines, environmental communicators have focused on framing the issue along alternative dimensions, such as avoiding health risks and reaping the economic benefits of green technologies, among others. Unfortunately, recent studies demonstrate that such framing is often ineffective at increasing public support for climate change policies across the political spectrum because the messages are interpreted based on an individual’s partisan identity.

This empirical study evaluates the relationship between identity salience (the aspect of an individual’s identity that is most likely to drive attitudes and preferences at a given time) and message effectiveness in changing attitudes on climate change. Through two survey experiments, I investigate whether increasing the salience of a non-partisan identity can increase frame acceptance and overcome partisan barriers to climate change policy support. For example, does priming an individual’s identity as a parent, combined with a frame about the effects of climate change on future generations, increase the likelihood of support for climate change mitigation policies? I hypothesize that presenting climate change mitigation messages when a parental identity is primed increases climate change policy support, particularly among political conservatives who otherwise would react to climate messages primarily on partisan cues. I also test the effects of priming both a partisan and a parental identity together, to better understand how identities compete in informing environmental policy preferences.