Tailoring climate change communication to female target groups – an experimental analysis of voting and consumer behavior in Switzerland
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2020-01-22
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
Climate change is a reality. Despite increasing materialization of this phenomenon and calls
for immediate action to limit its underlying causes, only a limited uptake of proenvironmental
behavior has been registered so far. One of its main reasons has been
concluded to be the faulty pro-environmental communication, that is in most cases built
ineffectively on erroneous assumptions about the nature of human behavior. The goal of the
here presented research was thus to find out, what aspects communication strategy should be
built on to motivate pro-environmental behavior, individual as well as collective. Considering
the need to specialize communication strategies for higher impact and their potential swing
voter role in Switzerland, a female target group was selected. To answer the research
question, an experiment was conducted, exposing the participants to three variations of a
communication strategy, preceded and followed by an online questionnaire. The results
showed that shorter and, namely, peer effects-based strategies are the most effective to
motivate pro-environmental action in general and among women in particular. The
conclusions of this experiment thus importantly contribute to the on-going discussion on how
to effectively communicate to motivate pro-environmental action, with insightful findings for
both practice and further research.
for immediate action to limit its underlying causes, only a limited uptake of proenvironmental
behavior has been registered so far. One of its main reasons has been
concluded to be the faulty pro-environmental communication, that is in most cases built
ineffectively on erroneous assumptions about the nature of human behavior. The goal of the
here presented research was thus to find out, what aspects communication strategy should be
built on to motivate pro-environmental behavior, individual as well as collective. Considering
the need to specialize communication strategies for higher impact and their potential swing
voter role in Switzerland, a female target group was selected. To answer the research
question, an experiment was conducted, exposing the participants to three variations of a
communication strategy, preceded and followed by an online questionnaire. The results
showed that shorter and, namely, peer effects-based strategies are the most effective to
motivate pro-environmental action in general and among women in particular. The
conclusions of this experiment thus importantly contribute to the on-going discussion on how
to effectively communicate to motivate pro-environmental action, with insightful findings for
both practice and further research.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
UC Berkeley: Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference
Publisher place
eScholarship.org
Volume
2018 Conference Proceedings
Start page
1
End page
12
Pages
12
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Contact Email Address
jana.plananska@unisg.ch
Eprints ID
259115