The persuasiveness of gain vs. loss framed messages on farmers’ perceptions and decisions to climate change: A case study in coastal communities of Vietnam

Abstract

Ongoing climate change results in a large increase in damaging climatic events that affect people’s health, environment, biodiversity, and food security. One of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change is agriculture because farming relies heavily on planning for weather and seasons according to experience of past years, and therefore changes in seasons and unusual weather patterns lead to loss of crops or livestock. Responding to climate change impacts requires both mitigation and adaptation, in which communication plays an important role to raise awareness, change behaviours and gain policy support. Gain vs. loss message framing has been extensively studied in persuasive communication. Despite successful examples in risk communication, the effect of gain vs. loss message framing method in communicating climate change, a psychologically distant risk, is still not well understood. This study combines message persuasiveness with psychological distance to develop messages to encourage farmers on climate adaptation. We applied a 2 × 2 factorial design (gain/loss and abstract/concrete framed messages) and conducted the research in a coastal farming community (N = 368). Findings confirm that gain-framed messages are more effective in raising risk perceptions and efficacy, with stronger impact on behavioural intentions toward climate change, compared to loss-framed messages. Above all, farmers were more willing to take adaptation measures when exposed to gain- in combination with concrete-framed messages vs. loss- and abstract-framed. Implications for climate change communication research and practice are discussed.