Personal Stories Can Shift Climate Change Beliefs and Risk Perceptions: The Mediating Role of Emotion

By Abel Gustafson, Matthew T. Ballew, Matthew H. Goldberg, M. Cutler, S. Rosenthal, Anthony Leiserowitz. 2020

103 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Sharing personal stories of how climate change is already harming people is a promising communication strategy to engage diverse and even skeptical audiences. Using two experiments, we test the effects of a radio story on the climate change beliefs and risk perceptions of political moderates and conservatives. The radio story, which aired on hundreds of stations across the U.S., is a North Carolina sportsman’s personal account of how climate change has already affected the places he loves. Both experiments found positive effects on global warming beliefs and risk perceptions. Additionally, Study 2 found these effects were mediated by emotional reactions of worry and compassion. These studies suggest personal stories can be a persuasive communication strategy.

Subfields: Communication, Literature and Literary Theory, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c65fa3c0dd3bc371d34dae04c0b57bd8e0dde313

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In Communication

1. Thomas DiBlasi
2. P. Walton
3. J. Ettinger
4. James Painter

In Literature and Literary Theory

1. Thomas DiBlasi
2. P. Walton
3. J. Ettinger
4. James Painter

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Thomas DiBlasi
2. P. Walton
3. J. Ettinger
4. James Painter

Citations in the corpus

• Climate of hope or doom and gloom? Testing the climate change hope vs. fear communications debate through online videos (2021, background): “The proportion of each category among the American public has recently shifted, reflecting changing views about the reality of climate change and the urgency of taking action (Goldberg et al. 2020).”