Scientist and Yale communications researcher Anthony Leiserowitz recently lamented that when it comes to climate change “You almost couldn’t design a problem that is a worse fit with our underlying psychology.”
Why? It’s hard for anybody to get worked up about a threat that feels abstract, far away in space and time, and too big for an individual to grapple with.
So what to do? We’ve often heard that the best communications strategies drive home how climate change impacts—as well as the co-benefits of smart energy solutions—are local, concrete, and personal. Well, what is more local, concrete, and personal than our bodies and the bodies of our friends and family?
Indeed, those who view climate change as being harmful to people are significantly more likely to support climate policy responses. And the fact is that climate change will harm people in every community in North America.
A recent study by Matthew Nisbet, Edward Maibach, and colleagues compared the effectiveness of three different frames for stirring audiences to support climate solutions—the standard “environmental consequences” frame, a national security frame, and a public health frame. They found that of the three, a public health frame was “most likely to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change mitigation and action.”
In other words, by framing climate change as a public health threat and presenting climate and energy solutions as opportunities to keep ourselves and our families healthy and safe, we can make strides—including with many new, “outside-the-choir” audiences—toward overcoming the myriad stubborn psychological barriers to engagement on the issue.
More specifically, across audience segments, the health implications of climate change appear to be “both useful and compelling, particularly when mitigation-related actions were paired with specific benefits to health”—cleaner air to breathe, healthier food to eat, and more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly communities.
It makes sense; health is a powerful shared value that is close to home and far more relevant to our day-to-day lives than polar bears (sorry, bears). Plus, most everybody understands the basic science of both pollution and disease—including the types of disease likely to get worse with a warming climate, like asthma or viruses and illnesses carried by mosquitoes or in water—better than they understand the science of climate change itself.
And, as Nisbet puts it, a public health frame connects on a more personal level, localizing the impacts of climate change. “And you put a human face on the problem,” he says. “That way, advocates can start to convey a sense of moral responsibility, especially in terms of protecting the innocent and the vulnerable. Many people see protecting the environment as a value, but not a plurality of Americans. But moral responsibility to protect the health of kids or the elderly is a more widely held value.”
The research gives us compelling reasons to why we should include a public health frame in our climate change communications and we recommend checking out the primer, Conveying the Human Implications of Climate Change: A Climate Change Communication Primer for Public Health Professionals. Here’s our quick guide:
Put a Face on Climate Change
Messengers matter. People trust doctors, nurses, and public health officials.
Reinforce the basics. “We are seeing serious impacts from human-caused climate change. Our health will suffer if we don’t act. And there’s a lot we can do.”
Localize it. “From harsh weather to disease, climate change threatens every part of the country. But solutions can keep our communities healthy and strong.”
Show health-climate win-wins. “Global warming is serious. So are asthma, heart disease, and obesity. Solutions are good for our health and the climate, from better food and clean air, to easy ways to get around by foot, bike, and transit.”
Here’s what a public health frame can do to engage disengaged audiences in climate solutions:
- First and foremost, it’s an opportunity to enlist new, trusted messengers: doctors, nurses, and public health officials.
- It puts the focus on people, not penguins. Talking about community health risks connects climate change to local, personal concerns—the health and well-being of our bodies, our children, and our communities.
- Pairing messages about climate solutions and the health benefits that come with them is an opportunity to present a “vision for a better, healthier future,” not just averted disaster or fancy clean energy technology. Whether you’re talking about affordable, convenient, accessible transit or energy conservation in homes and buildings or carbon pollution taxes, the health frame connects policy solutions to positive steps toward resilient communities and improved quality of life. And this can be more empowering than simply stating the risks. As Nisbet puts it, “They see it as something within their realm of control, something that can make their lives better.”
- It helps champions of climate and energy policy build partnerships with a wider range of officials, organizations, and individuals to help spread the word, share resources, and build support among varied constituencies. For instance the AARP, many labor unions, NAACP chapters, and PTAs care deeply about the kinds of public health risks that are likely to increase because of climate change.
There’s reason to hope that where the information deficit model has consistently failed, a public health approach may succeed. Please share this with local leaders in public health, as well as physicians and nurses you know.
Mark Feldman is a writer and communications consultant who works with environmental nonprofits, public agencies, and green businesses. As a principal of Writing Works he helps organizations and businesses communicate effectively and creatively.
Ruben Anderson
I think the WWF report Common Cause is a good reference for this topic.
Common Cause looks at the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Intrinsic behaviour is doing something because it is the right thing to do.
Extrinsic is doing something for selfish reasons of status, power, wealth. Personal health is a selfish reason.
The sad thing, clearly laid out by the studies cited in Common Cause, is that reinforcing one value reinforces related values. So, reinforcing public health will reinforce the desire for the other selfish goods, like wealth and power—things which are very bad for the ecosphere.
Most extrinsic motivators, like programs that pay for recycling, show good short-term benefits, but no long term change. Or, in this case, may even make the problem worse.
David M Carter
Thank you for sharing this important research. As a consultant specializing in emotion and climate change communication, I agree that the public health frame presents our greatest opportunity to engage a broader swath of citizens in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Given that your preamble raises the spectre of human psychology, I think it is important to point out that the differences between how people generally respond to negative messages versus positive messages could not be more different. Your article confuses these two fundamentally disparate pathways of human response.
For example, your fourth paragraph suggests that knowing climate change is harmful to personal health will somehow awaken people to the reality that they need to do something to address the problem. The reality is that messaging which inspires negative emotions forces us into hard-wired fight or flight responses. These responses are necessarily intense, short-term, and tightly focused.
Alternatively, as Nesbit and Maibach point out, it is important to frame messages as opportunities. In their research, when mitigation-related actions were paired with specific benefits to health, engagement happened. With these types of messages, it is more likely that positive emotions will be activated, at least to the extent that negative emotions and their powerfully unpleasant responses can be over-shadowed (there is convincing research showing that strong positive to negative emotion ratios can lead to sustained periods of personal resilience and well-being). The power in positive emotions is in their capacity to; broaden awareness, promote creativity and collaboration, and improve social connectedness (among other benefits).
I think it’s important to be clear that negative messages on the subject of climate change are effective at building awareness. But, they will not inspire us to make the behavioral changes necessary to strengthen our health and resilience while, at the same time, mitigating the impacts of climate change. It is the opportunities around a positively-envisioned future that will truly engage people in effective and sustained ways. Let’s be clear about these separate emotional pathways, and how people will respond differently to each.
Anna Fahey
Thank you for these insights, David and Ruben. All good points. I do hope that it comes through in the post and the talking points that the negative (threat, risks, impacts) messages are most effective if paired with hopeful messages about solutions (positive visions for both personal health and community strength/health/well-being). I agree that negative-only messages are a dead end and probably purely extrinsic motivations are also troublesome. Bob Doppelt writes about the need for dissonance, efficacy, and a sense that change will bring multiple benefits/upsides:
Ruben
Please do read the supplemental documents on this study. Careful consideration would be required before use—in general, I think the conclusions would support using this frame only for the audience of disbelievers—only about 25% of the population.
Tim Larson
You might also be interested in the video storytelling series on “Facing Climate Change” by documentarians Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele. See http://bdsjs.com/facing-climate-change/
Bill Riley
This study is really just another example of faith in the rational person approach that says that if you provide accessible and accurate information people will change their behavior. This specific study claims that the new messages increased people’s awareness which then produced an increase in self-reported intent to change but nobody in the study actually did anything; they just reported that they were thinking about it. Nobody changed any behavior.
We need to start looking at the research in behavioral economics and brain research so that we start doing things that work. In the 1950’s adult cigarette smoking rates in the US were at 46%, then information about how it caused disease came out and warnings were put onto each pack, so by 1990 rates were at 26%. Almost 20 years later 17% of US adults are regular smokers and 1 in 5 children are regular smokers by the time they get out of high school. This is not success. While public health approaches were providing scary facts, the industry convinced a lot of people that stinky breath and clothing and offensive public behavior (polluting the air of people near you and littering) were sexy and cool.
Are there many people in Cascadia who don’t know that we sit on a subduction earthquake fault that is going to be catastrophic sometime in the next fifty years? How many families and businesses are prepared?
Look at the huge numbers of people who have voted directly against their own self-interest in the last 30 years.
Let’s get some research that documents behavior changes.