Strong climate legislation and public behaviour change – the role of communication

No description supplie

Climate justice: high-status ingroup social models increase pro-environmental action through making actions seem more moral.

This is the peer reviewed version of the article which has been published in final form at DOI: 10.1111/tops.12178. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.Recent work has suggested that our cognitive biases and moral psychology may pose significant barriers to tackling climate change. Here, we report evidence that through status and group-based social influence processes, and our moral sense of justice, it may be possible to employ such characteristics of the human mind in efforts to engender pro-environmental action. We draw on applied work demonstrating the efficacy of social modeling techniques in order to examine the indirect effects of social model status and group membership (through perceptions of efficacy, pro-environmental social identity and moral judgments of how fair it is for individuals to perform particular pro-environmental actions) on pro-environmental action tendencies. We find evidence that high- (vs. low-) status models increase pro-environmental action, in part, through making such actions seem morally fairer to undertake. This effect of high-status models only occurs when they share a meaningful ingroup membership with the target of influence. Further, we find evidence that this conditional effect of high-status models may also have a direct impact on action tendencies. While the exact behaviors that are influenced may vary across student and non-student samples, we argue that a focus on the "justice pathway" to action and the social-cognitive features of models may offer a good opportunity for cognitive and behavioral scientists to integrate insights from basic research with those stemming from more applied research efforts

Climate communication for biologists: when a picture can tell a thousand words

Pictures often tell a story better than the proverbial 1,000 words. However, in connection with climate change, many pictures can be highly misleading, for example, when a snowball is used to ridicule the notion of global warming or when a picture of a dead crop is supposed to alert people to climate change. We differentiate between such inappropriate pictures and those that can be used legitimately because they capture long-term trends. For example, photos of a glacier’s retreat are legitimate indicators of the long-term mass balance loss that is observed for the vast majority of glaciers around the world

Tools for a new climate conversation: A mixed-methods study of language for public engagement across the political spectrum

Political orientation and ideology are amongst the most significant influences on climate change attitudes and responses. Specifically, those with right-of-centre political views are typically less concerned and more sceptical about climate change. A significant challenge remains to move beyond this ideological impasse and achieve a more open and constructive debate across the political spectrum. This paper reports on novel mixed-methods research in the UK to develop and test a series of ‘narratives’ to better engage citizens with centre-right political views. Qualitative work in Study 1 revealed two particularly promising narratives. The first focused on the idea that saving energy is predicated on the ‘conservative’ principle of avoiding waste; the second focused on the advantages of ‘Great British Energy’ (based on patriotic support for domestic low-carbon technologies). An online experiment in Study 2 with a representative UK sample compared these narratives with a more typically left-of-centre narrative focused on the concept of ‘climate justice’ with a representative sample of the UK public. Results indicate that the first two narratives elicited broad agreement and reduced scepticism amongst centre-right participants, while the ‘climate justice’ narrative (which reflects a common environmental message framing) polarised audiences along political lines. This research offers clear implications for how climate change communicators can move beyond preaching to the converted and initiate constructive dialogue about climate change with traditionally disengaged audiences

Climate Justice:High-Status Ingroup Social Models Increase Pro-Environmental Action Through Making Actions Seem More Moral

This is the peer reviewed version of the article which has been published in final form at DOI: 10.1111/tops.12178. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.Recent work has suggested that our cognitive biases and moral psychology may pose significant barriers to tackling climate change. Here, we report evidence that through status and group-based social influence processes, and our moral sense of justice, it may be possible to employ such characteristics of the human mind in efforts to engender pro-environmental action. We draw on applied work demonstrating the efficacy of social modeling techniques in order to examine the indirect effects of social model status and group membership (through perceptions of efficacy, pro-environmental social identity and moral judgments of how fair it is for individuals to perform particular pro-environmental actions) on pro-environmental action tendencies. We find evidence that high- (vs. low-) status models increase pro-environmental action, in part, through making such actions seem morally fairer to undertake. This effect of high-status models only occurs when they share a meaningful ingroup membership with the target of influence. Further, we find evidence that this conditional effect of high-status models may also have a direct impact on action tendencies. While the exact behaviors that are influenced may vary across student and non-student samples, we argue that a focus on the "justice pathway" to action and the social-cognitive features of models may offer a good opportunity for cognitive and behavioral scientists to integrate insights from basic research with those stemming from more applied research efforts

How useful is the Multi-Level Perspective for transport and sustainability research

This article reflects on the strengths and limitations of the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) in the socio-technical transitions literature, focussing in particular on experiences applying the MLP in the domain of sustainable transport research. I address two questions: to what extent is the MLP useful for transport and sustainability researchers; and how might the MLP be improved to overcome present limitations and better address transport and sustainability research needs? I highlight contributions of the MLP to transport and sustainability modelling and social research including providing a more integrated and systemic perspective on socio-technical change. The MLP has also been useful as an analytical tool for identifying and engaging with diverse stakeholder groups, including mainstream (‘regime’) and alternative (‘niche’) organisations. The MLP might be improved by integrating natural, behavioural and political science insights, and particularly by elucidating how behavioural–institutional change might occur. This is critical for transport research given the expressed and observed public resistance to changing travel behaviour. It remains to be seen whether the MLP and transitions framework themselves require more radical adjustment to be able to predict the changes needed to support a transition to a sustainable society