Abstract

Many people who are concerned about the issue of climate change do not engage in the collective action behaviors that are most likely to lead to societal‐scale solutions. Such attitude‐behavior inconsistency is a well‐documented phenomenon. This study investigates whether exposure to an effectively framed message from a highly credible source can increase the consistency between attitudes and activism behaviors among people with pre‐existing strong attitudes, particularly for behaviors that are less difficult. The release of Pope Francis' climate change encyclical, Laudato Sí, and subsequent visit to the United States provide an opportunity to test this research question in a natural field setting. A nationally representative, within‐subject panel survey was conducted two months prior to the release of the encyclical and again four months later, after the release and papal visit, to assess the impact of the Pope's message on Americans' climate change consumer and political advocacy behaviors. Among people who are already concerned about climate change, higher exposure to the Pope's climate change message is associated with increases in attitude‐behavior consistency for less difficult activism behaviors. The findings suggest that sustained exposure to compelling climate messages from trusted sources can increase the performance of activism behaviors.

Highlights

  • The significance of transformational leadership on climate change has been not engage in the collective action behaviors that are most likely to lead recognized, scholarly attention to societal-scale solutions

  • This study focuses on the members of the public who are already highly concerned about climate change, to assess the influence of the Pope’s climate leadership on their political and consumer activism

  • We investigated whether exposure to the Pope’s message about global warming strengthened the relationship between four consumer and political activism behaviors by using within-subject longitudinal data, which made it possible to isolate differences in behavior between the two time points, and to examine whether those differences were associated with exposure to the Pope’s message

Read more

Summary

Exposure to the Pope’s Message and Motivations for Collective Action

A large body of research shows that people are more likely to take action when they are motivated, and have the ability and opportunity to do so.[15] We use the motivation-ability-opportunity (MOA) framework to identify some of the ways that exposure to the Pope’s climate message could have influenced attitude-behavior (A-B) consistency ( we do not test the association of these predictors with consistency in this study) and to justify why examining the influence of the Pope’s message on A-B consistency is worth doing. Hearing the Pope’s climate change message is unlikely to have changed the audience’s abilities or opportunities for activism.[16] the Pope’s message may have increased people’s motivation to become activists by strengthening their beliefs and attitudes about global warming, connecting global warming to their personal values, message repetition, and prompting them to act. By making the link between global warming and inequality, the Pope may have strengthened the personal relevance and motivational power of the issue, leading to an increased tendency to act.[19]

Repeating the Message
Strengthening Beliefs and Attitudes
Connecting the Issue to Personal Values
Collective Action and Behavior Difficulty
Analysis and Results
Conclusion
Experimental Section
Conflict of Interest
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call