Since 2003, social psychologists have agreed that in the United States, political party identification is one of the chief determinants for levels of policy support and concern for certain issues. The intimate tie between political identity and climate attitudes, motivations, and beliefs in the U.S. has only tightened over the past 15 years.
Studies still show that Democrats possess higher levels of climate change policy support and risk perception than Republicans. Thus, both climate researchers and policymakers must learn how to effectively communicate climate change given the U.S. political environment.
Research suggests that framing, or the process of selectively emphasizing certain words, phrases, or images to make an issue more salient to a specific population, can influence climate attitudes and belief. While contemporary research is optimistic about the persuasive power of framing climate change as a public health issue for all party identifications, studies offer a much more mixed picture for the national security frame’s ability to influence skeptical segments of the U.S. population.
Using an online survey experiment (N = 1,115), my study examined how framing climate change as a public health and national security issue influences Americans’ support for mitigation and adaptation policies and risk perception.
Above all, my results reinforced that Americans operate party first, policy second when expressing their levels of support or concern. Results for risk perception are not displayed in this post, but they mostly mirror results for policy support.
As seen in Figure 1 above, respondents for all parties responded to the framed articles in unexpected ways.
Both Democrats and Independents exposed to the national security frame reported higher scores than their counterparts in the other two conditions. Democrats exposed to the public health frame had a slightly higher policy support score compared to Democrats in the control condition (but not higher than Democrats in the security condition). Independents in the public health condition did not have a statistically different policy support score compared to Independents in the control condition.
This means that the public health frame did not have a framing effect for Independents – a particularly surprising finding. More research must be done to examine how political ideology influences reactions to both frames and whether a national security frame is a highly effective frame for Independents. I do, however, have some data that can offer insight into these trends.
Decades of public opinion data shows that, regardless of party, the American people have consistently displayed high levels of trust and confidence in U.S. public health and U.S. military officials.
According to my data, when asked how much confidence they have in U.S. public health officials, 45 percent of Republicans ( N = 166) and 44 percent of Independents ( N = 152) answered either “none” or “not too much”. For comparison, only 17 percent of Democrats ( N = 62) expressed low confidence. An inferred explanation is that COVID-19 is polarizing public confidence in health officials, but this explanation must be explored in future studies.
The polarization of confidence is also pertinent in the discussion of why the frames “backfired” for Republicans. I grounded my expectation that the national security frame would work well for Republicans in public opinion data that shows Republicans consistently possess higher levels of confidence and trust in U.S. military officials than Democrats and Independents. However, Republicans in both experimental conditions reported lower policy support (and risk perception) scores than Republicans in the control condition. While unexpected, my results also offer reasons for optimism with regards to the national security frame’s ability to persuade climate skeptics.
As seen in Figure 2 below, for some of the nine prompted policies, Republicans responded differently from the other two parties only after they were shown a framed article.
Figure 2 displays respondents’ levels of support for relocating U.S. military bases that are currently threatened by recurrent floods and rising sea levels (e.g., Norfolk Naval Station). Republicans reported statistically the same support scores as Democrats and Independents for this policy in the control condition but fell into the expected patterns of support when exposed to a framed article. This means that for multiple policies in the sample, Republicans only reported lower levels of support after they were shown a framed article and told that climate change is the reason the policy must be enacted.
In short: once Republican respondents saw the words climate change, they declined in policy support. Future research must examine whether security drivers can be separated from climate change to effectively communicate the need for the policy.
The future of climate change communication is still very much in the hands of researchers and policymakers alike. While large improvements must be made to both the public health and national security frames before one can be confident in their persuasive power, I remain optimistic for the future of these two frames – and the future of climate change framing broadly.
Matthew Eitel is a senior at Indiana University.
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