Consensus messaging in climate change communication: Metacognition as moderator variable in the gateway belief model

Abstract

The issue of anthropogenic climate change is one of the most pressing challenges for society. Thus, the development of efficient strategies to increase the public's awareness of climate change is essential. Previous research has shown that one such strategy, consensus messaging, can correct peoples' misconceptions about their estimation of scientific consensus concerning climate change and increase, for example, their support for measures against global warming. Given the importance of developing reliable strategies, understanding the circumstances under which consensus messaging does and does not work is crucial. Thus, the present study investigated confidence in perceived scientific consensus (PSC) as a moderator variable in the consensus messaging process, using a national representative US sample (N = 898). More specifically, we investigated the role of confidence in PSC for (i) the debiasing process, i.e., the integration of the consensus message into the estimation of scientific consensus, and (ii) the updating process of climate change attitudes (belief in climate change, worry about climate change, and human causation of climate change). Results showed that confidence in PSC significantly predicts how much participants updated their PSC toward the consensus. We replicated those results for a high-consensus country (N = 1110, representative German sample). Furthermore, confidence in PSC played a moderating role in updating participants' beliefs in the human causation of climate change. Our findings suggest climate change related metacognition to be an important factor explaining the formation and updating of corresponding beliefs and highlight the importance of considering metacognitive aspects of climate change communication strategies.