Sorry, could you say that again?
Communicating about climate change and environmental issues - what works and what doesn't ?
Welcome to the latest Compassionate Nature research digest which considers the importance of helping us all to understand environmental terms and ways of effective communication around climate change..
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.
The words of George Bernard Shaw are as relevant today as they were when he was alive, perhaps even more so given the wide variety of information sources available to us in a world of online platforms and 24/7 news coverage. One of the challenges that presents is a plethora of sources, often using reduced formats where brevity beats depth, and the risk of misinformation which can require time to validate. It is easy to feel information overload, especially around some of the big challenges we face such as climate change.
A recent survey on public awareness of environmental terms highlighted that many people in the UK do not fully understand some of those terms, including commonly used ones. The poll showed differences across age groups, with younger people more likely to understand more terms than older people. The poll was specifically looking at the use of these terms within brand and product marketing, finding that while the terms may be hard to define, consumer choices were being made on their use by businesses. The poll suggests that we may not always know what these terms really mean, but if we see them being used we tend to think more positively towards the business.
It is perhaps not unsurprising that environmental terms are not always easily defined or understood. Some have specific scientific meanings which can be hard to condense into plainer language. Some terms can be misused through deliberate or innocent misinterpretation, while others have been reduced to a buzzword used without context, such as the use of “green” as a prefix. The poll made me wonder about a difficulty continuum for environmental terms and where common ones would appear on that spectrum. Perhaps ‘sustainable’ is at the easier end ? How about “net zero”? That’s probably towards the more difficult. What about the different meaning of seemingly similar words such as “climate” and “weather”? How should complex ideas such as net zero be communicated. At one extreme you have the IPCC definition that net zero is “achieved when anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are balanced by anthropogenic removals over a specified period” through to the other extreme of a media outlet, the BBC in this case, defining it as “no longer adding to the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere”. Did the BBC reduce the scientific meaning too much in trying to simplify the definition- I thought so.
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I am perhaps labouring a point although it is an important one. If we don’t fully understand what environmental terms mean then how can we have informed discussions and make appropriate decisions as individuals, consumers or voters.
And as George Bernard Shaw illustrated, it is not just how the message is delivered but what actions or behaviours that a message leads to which is critical.
It is also often suggested that communication around environmental messages is restricted due to psychological distance, meaning that we do not take action from information as we perceive the impacts are not local to us and/or are off in the future. This often used suggestion has a poor evidence base and a recent meta analysis of studies, summarised here in the British Psychological Society research digest indicates that actually the majority of people across different societies and countries feel the impacts are happening now and they are directly experiencing some of those impacts. Perhaps one reason that it may still feel distant to some people comes back to messaging, including fixations upon certain thresholds and tipping points, which have often been portrayed in popular culture as happening fast, with global catastrophic events.
Information about environmental and climate science is often complex, with impacts that are large scale, requiring behavioural and social changes that will impact daily life which can be difficult to imagine. So how can that information be effectively shared? It is an ongoing debate so this research digest won’t have a magic answer. It might offer some thoughts based on recently published papers which consider the communication of environmental and climate change messages, along with the relationship to behaviours of individuals.
So many sources.
Perhaps it is worth starting with considering the sources and how we get our information. A 2023 paper by Renata Dagiliūtė provides insightful analysis based on data from several European countries. Data from the Eurobarometer public opinion database provided a sample of just over 27,000 citizens, of whom 54% were female and nearly a third were aged 65 or over. The sample was evenly split across residents from rural, small urban and large urban settings, who supplied their top 3 sources of information about the environment along with their level of pro-environmental behaviour. A pro-environmental behaviour can be defined as an action or choice that individuals make which is beneficial to the environment and can include activities like saving water or using energy saving light bulbs. These behaviours may be directly motivated by environmental concern or other reasons, such as saving money that provide an indirect benefit to the environment.
The results revealed the top three sources were television (70%), followed by internet sources such as websites (37%) and then newspapers (29%). Social media was below the top three sources, with an overall score of 18%. The lowest ranked source at around 2% was from museums and national parks. The data suggest some differences in gender and in age. Perhaps unsurprisingly younger people favoured online and social media sources while older people favoured TV, newspaper and radio. On average the respondents regularly completed 4 pro-environmental behaviours, which increased to 6 if books and scientific literature was noted as a top source of information. Books as a source of information was the strongest predictor of pro-environmental behaviours while TV was the least. These findings on source type and pro-environmental behaviours made me think about passive and active information seeking, with TV perhaps more of a passive format, while someone interested in learning more actively may seek information perhaps from books and is therefore more likely to be undertaking greater pro-environmental behaviours. This illustrates that no causal link between source type and behaviour can really be made from this data.
There are other limitations to the analysis, as it only used the top 3 sources from each respondent and usage levels of sources were not measured, while the choice of 14 pro-environmental behaviours for respondents to choose from may have missed other actions that people take. The results may be skewed towards more traditional media formats given that a third of the respondents were aged 65 and over. There may be other variables not accounted for, as the data only captured certain demographics e.g. education level was not captured which may have a bearing on the results. What the results do suggest is that older media formats are relevant, and in this case dominant, sources for environmental information. TV was the top source reported although it appears to have the lowest effect on pro-environmental behaviours, while newer media formats become more relevant as you move down the age groups.
Video formats.
As TV was the top reported source and had the lowest predictive influence on behaviours I wondered about the effectiveness of video format to communicate environmental messages. A study by Sam Greaves and colleagues (2023) looked at the effectiveness of a short climate change video on pro-environmental behaviours and mood. The video was just under 9 minutes long and was an animation consisting of information about climate change impacts and suggestions for personal actions. Using a Random Controlled Trial (RCT) experimental design the study had a sample of 100 adult participants, with an average age of 34 and who were mainly (71%) female. The participants were randomly allocated to one of two conditions. In the experimental condition they watched the climate change video, while in the control condition they watched a similar length video about a new hotel complex, chosen as an emotionally neutral topic. Before and after watching the video each participant completed self-report measures of their intentions toward pro-environmental behaviours and their mood. The results indicated that those in the experimental group had increased negative affect and increased intentions towards pro-environmental behaviour compared to the control, although the effect size was small. While causality cannot be determined and the results are limited by the sample size and demographics, the study does suggest that a short focussed video format may support bringing attention to environmental issues. This appears to result in a negative emotional response and an increased, at least in the short term, intention to take personal action.
From the abstract to the specific.
A limitation of both that study and the Eurobarometer data analysis is the uncertainty over what was influential in the information upon behaviours. The video clip contained both large scale information about climate change and personal action information so it is unclear whether one of those elements or a combination was influential, while the data analysis did not capture what type of information the European residents obtained from the various sources. There have been mixed findings from previous studies on whether specific actions or large scale information leads to increases in pro-environmental behaviours.
A study by Oriane Sarrasin and colleagues (2024) from the University of Lausanne may help with considering the influence of abstract, large scale environmental information, or of specific, personal action information upon pro-environmental behaviours. The study was undertaken across two neighbourhoods in Switzerland as part of a promotional programme run by an energy supplier. In the experimental group 68 households received specific information on energy saving supported by abstract information on climate change while the 109 households in a control group only received specific action information. A resident from each household provided measures of pro-environmental behaviours, environmental identity and values before and after the information campaign. The household resident responding to the surveys were predominantly female and aged in their early 50s. The households in the experimental condition appeared to pay more attention to the information, resulting in self-reported increases in environmental concern (as measured by biospheric values) and more pro-environmental behaviours than the control households. It was also reported that more conversations about climate change were held in the experimental households due to the provision of both abstract and specific information than was reported in the control households.
As a study conducted within a promotional campaign by a third party (the energy supplier) there are weaknesses in the experimental controls, with restricted data collection opportunities and different members of the household completing the surveys at the two measurement points. While acknowledging those limitations, the results suggest that in this campaign the combination of abstract and specific information was more influential than just specific information, both in terms of directly increasing reported pro-environmental behaviour and indirectly through increased awareness and discussion.
Getting social.
The Eurobarometer data indicated that social media platforms are increasingly used as sources of environmental information, especially by younger age groups. One difference social media has to more traditional media outlets is the readers exposure to social influences, such as seeing how much support a post is getting through likes and reshares, and by information being shared by individuals identified as influential or celebrities. Min Xiao’s 2023 paper documents a number of experiments which looked at how those social influences can affect the perception of credibility of the source and whether positively framing information is more effective than negative framing. The experiments used Tweets (a post on the Twitter/X platform) constructed for the study which provided an environmental message relating to an article which was linked to in the Tweet. All the participants were undergraduate students at a university in midwest America and in each of the experiments they were almost evenly split between male and female respondents.
In the first experiment 276 participants were shown a version of a Tweet from the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which was either negatively or positively worded and either had low support or high support as indicated by likes, retweets and comments. Participants were more likely to report the source as credible, read the linked article and reshare the Tweet when the support was high. Credibility of the source was also higher when Tweet was positively framed.
In the second experiment 217 participants were presented with similar Tweets as the first experiment, with negative and positive framing versions. However this time the Tweet could come from two sources, the EPA and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, chosen as a celebrity who is known for environmental activism. Despite the celebrity appeal the EPA was reported as the more credible source, resulting in greater reshares of their Tweet and more intention to read the linked article. This experiment was repeated with another 214 participants to assess the effect of support. Only the negatively framed version of the Tweet was used, this time with high or low support indicators. Again the EPA version was seen as more credible than DiCaprio, although support levels made no difference unlike the first experiment.
A final experiment replicated the last one with DiCaprio replaced by Taylor Swift, chosen as a celebrity not known for environmental activism, and with a greater difference between the high and low support indicators. Again the 292 participants reported the EPA as more credible, while more support appeared to increase levels of intent to read the linked article or reshare the tweet.
The collective results suggest that a professional institution is perceived as a better source of environmental information than a celebrity and where the institutional message has high support the message resulted in greater interaction and engagement. However the results are limited due the samples consisting of undergraduate students who you would expect to be aware of checking source validity. There were also a few conflicting differences in some of the results across the experiments. The study does raise the question of whether institutions like the EPA should be investing more time to actively communicate via social media platforms, encouraging engagement and interaction with their posts to help share credible information, especially with the growing use of social media as a source of environmental information.
Getting creative.
Are there other ways to communicate environmental messages that can be both informative and engaging? A small scale 2023 study from Doresy Kaufmann and colleagues at the University of Arizona provides a nice example of using art to support sharing scientific data. Art may be beneficial through its invocation of an emotional response as opposed to reading statistical information, with emotions linked to motivating behaviours (take a look at a previous research digest newsletter for more on this).
Across a two and half year period residents supported a citizen science project of collecting rainwater, soil and plant samples. The study published in 2023 covers the end of the first year, when the initial environment sampling results were presented to 53 participating residents in one of two ways. Residents were randomly allocated to attend a data sharing event where they either received their data in a booklet format, using graphs and statistics, or received the booklet alongside the opportunity to see their data represented in a water based art installation. The art installation was called Ripple Effect and was designed to provide an interactive and multi-sensory medium to allow residents to explore their data.
The study found that nearly half of the participants in the Ripple Effect group found it a helpful way to visualise their data, with a quarter finding it more impactful than the booklet and provided a greater emotional responses to the data results. The majority of participants who said the data would lead to increased harvesting of rainwater had experienced the Ripple Effect. After 5-6 months the research team followed up with 26 of the participants, finding that the majority of those who could recall specific details of their data had attended the Ripple Effect event. All those who said they intended to take action through increased water saving at the Ripple Effect event had gone on to actually do so, while those who said they intended to act but didn’t were all from the booklet only group. From the 26 residents interviewed at the follow-up, 7 residents had taken action towards saving water after the Ripple Effect event compared to 2 from the booklet-only event.
There are limitations around the study, especially as other factors may be influential on intentions turning into actions that were not captured and it was a small sample, especially at the 5-6 month follow up. However it does support other research that suggests art provides an engaging, novel and memorable method to present environmental data. This can result in greater emotional response and intentions to act, with this study suggesting the art installation lead to more actual pro-environmental behaviour.
Getting the message across
I did say this article would not provide an answer on how to best communicate environmental information. Institutions and organisations trying to communicate credible information will need to continue to use both traditional and newer media platforms and formats for the foreseeable future. When doing so the information has to be clearly communicated and defined, with no assumption of prior knowledge, especially around terms that are commonly used but which may not be fully understood. Providing specific actions within a wider context of environmental information may be a more effective way to encourage behaviour changes. Thinking more creatively about how to present data, such as using interactive and multi-sensory mediums, may also encourage more engagement and help with behavioural choices.
Communication is a two-way thing though. While there is an emphasis on the information provider to explain clearly, especially given the complexity of environmental science, there is also an emphasis on the information receiver to check understanding and ask questions. Within today’s online, often fast-paced discourse, the ability to ask questions is there but may be restricted by fear of appearing silly when asking about terms that are commonly used or come with the risk of being rebuked in a public and visible manner.
If we are going to be able to tackle the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation we all need to be able to understand and discuss complex terms and concepts. If we can do so by helping each other understand, gain information from credible sources and be able to ask questions without fear, then we might just make some progress.
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References
Dagiliūtė, R. (2023). Environmental information: Different sources different levels of pro-environmental behaviours?. Sustainability, 15(20), 14773. https://doi.org/10.3390/su152014773
Greaves, S., Harvey, C., & Kotera, Y. (2023). Exposure to climate change information on affect and pro-environmental behavioural intentions: A Randomised Controlled Trial. Earth, 4(4), 845-858.https://doi.org/10.3390/earth4040045
Kaufmann, D. B., Palawat, K., Sandhaus, S., Buxner, S., McMahon, E., & Ramírez-Andreotta, M. D. (2023). Communicating environmental data through art: the role of emotion and memory in evoking environmental action. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), 1-14.https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02459-3
Xiao, M. (2023). Environmental Communication on Twitter: The Impact of Source, Bandwagon Support, and Message Valence on Target Audiences. Sustainability, 15(20), 14732. https://doi.org/10.3390/su152014732
Sarrasin, O., Gale, J., & Butera, F. (2024). Should we talk (more) about climate change when promoting energy conservation? An intervention in Swiss households. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 6, 100179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2023.100179
Bravo for the call for more studies on what impacts behavior.
As far as the effects of TV/Video, it seems the main confounding factor is age. If you’re looking at the impact of TV messaging without taking into account age, you can’t separate out the fact that most people who watch TV are older, and thus less likely to take action to begin with.
Also, the book reading public is probably already made up of people aware of and committed to some kind of change (there’s another confounding factor, that the readers might be among older folks also; so now you can single out some factors: Older people who get information online (rather than primarily TV) AND from books may be among the most committed to action!
My sense is it’s not the medium, it’s the audience. Find the audience most likely to respond and figure out ways to SIMPLY SIMPLY SIMPLY get the info across.
I have 3 graduate degrees (one in research psychology) and I STILL have difficulty understanding some of hte more complex issues around climate change. On the other hand, about a year ago my wife and I had the good fortunate to talk to a 16 year old high school student who was the head of her high school environmental club who explained things to me I never understood despite years of keeping track of the issues (I mean, since I read EF Schumacher in the 70s!).
Make simple videos, with great graphics, have a dedicated website that you test out to make sure the average 13 year old would not only understand but be excited, and you’ve got a start.
And be sure you have very very very simple action steps, starting with the simplest (a guide to mail in voting for local and regional and national candidates who will actually do something) to actions they can take in their own communities to form letters to send not just to politicians but CEOs, non profits, anybody who can make a difference.
And please, let this “anybody who can make a difference” extend far beyond the usual suspects. A friend just sent me a passage from an internationally respected climatologist. This scientist said something like, “Ok, we give up - there’s not going to be a technological OR political fix. Nothing less than a fundamental change of human consciousness is going to save us.”
Well, if that’s the most important thing (and I’m convinced it is) you need to consult with and make a list of a whole lot of people (meditation teachers, social workers and other counselors, psychologists, philosophers and heck maybe even theologians) you wouldn’t normally have thought of.
Let us know when the new website/channel/tiktok/substack or whatever is up. The world is waiting for you.