Author
Listed:
- Shane Timmons
- Ylva Andersson
- Peter D. Lunn
Abstract
Generations differ in their contribution to climate change and susceptibility to its effects. Contextualizing climate change as an intergenerational issue may therefore alter public engagement. We report a pre-registered, online experiment with a youth sample (N = 500, aged 16–24 years) in Ireland that tested whether highlighting generational differences in descriptions of climate change affects (i) worry about climate change, (ii) perception of others’ worry, (iii) belief in collective action and (iv) pro-environmental intentions. We also tested the effect of correcting young people’s misperceptions about how concerned older generations (aged 40+) are. The generational narrative amplified self-reported worry about climate change, from 5.42 (SD = 1.45) on a 7-point rating scale in the control group to 5.76 (SD = 1.18) among those who read the generational narrative (d = 0.26). Those who read the generational narrative also believed their close friends (M = 5.14, SD = 1.32) and other peers (M = 5.28, SD = 1.19) were more worried than those who read the control narrative (M = 4.85, SD = 1.48 and M = 5.03, SD = 1.19, respectively; ds = 0.20). There were no significant effects of contextualizing climate change as an intergenerational issue on perceived worry among older people, belief in collective action or pro-environmental intentions. Providing accurate information on older people’s worry, however, boosted belief in collective action, particularly for the majority who initially underestimated it (M = 4.22 out of 7, SD = 1.14 vs. M = 4.63, SD = 1.18, d = 0.36). The results have implications for communications with young people about climate change. Correcting underestimations of concern about climate change between socio-demographic subgroups may help to foster engagement.Policy highlightsCommunications that highlight generational differences in the causes and effects of climate change may be unhelpful; they increase worry among young people without motivating them to act.Most young people underestimate how worried older people are about climate change and this misperception correlates with belief that people are less likely to work together to mitigate climate change.Providing accurate information on how worried older people are boosts belief in collective action, but only among the majority of young people who underestimate it.Communications about climate change likely benefit from avoiding highlighting differences between socio-demographic subgroups and correcting misperceptions where they exist.
Suggested Citation
Shane Timmons & Ylva Andersson & Peter D. Lunn, 2024.
"Communicating climate change as a generational issue: experimental effects on youth worry, motivation and belief in collective action,"
Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(10), pages 1457-1473, November.
Handle:
RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:24:y:2024:i:10:p:1457-1473
DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2024.2341080
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:24:y:2024:i:10:p:1457-1473. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tcpo20 .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.