Does climate change framing matter? Evidence from an experiment of crop advisors in the Midwestern United States

Climate change is predicted to have increasingly negative consequences for the agricultural sector. Thus, it is important that crop advisors encourage farmers to adopt management practices that help mitigate or adapt to these changes. However, widespread skepticism persists regarding the existence of anthropogenic climate change and the need for conservation practices. Previous research indicates that individuals who are skeptical of the existence of climate change may be resistant to adopting conservation behaviors when they are described as addressing climate change impacts. Framing such practices as instead addressing “weather extremes” may be one method to encourage recommendations of such conservation practices. In the current study, we examined whether framing cover crops—a climate change-adaptive practice that enhances soil health—as a way to address that weather extremes rather than climate change would enhance crop advisors’ reported likelihood of recommending cover crops to their farmers, particularly among advisors who are skeptical of the existence of climate change. Support for cover crops among crop advisors in our sample was quite high overall, but as predicted, those who were more skeptical of climate change were less likely to recommend cover crops. However, framing condition (whether cover crops were described as addressing weather variability vs. climate change vs. no frame) had no main or moderating effects. These findings suggest that the use of climate change messaging in the framing of farm management practices may not negatively influence crop advisors’ recommendations as much as previously thought, but more research using other conservation practices is needed.