Their Economy and Our Health: Communicating Climate Change to the Divided American Public

Abstract

Climate change poses severe economic and public health threats to societies around the world. However, little is known about how selectively emphasizing its impacts on different issues and in different locations influence public engagement in climate change mitigation. Utilizing an experimental survey with adult participants, this study investigates the effect of issue framing and distance framing on risk perception and policy support related to climate change. The impacts of political ideology, environmental value, and belief in climate science on message effect are also examined. Based on the results of ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) and OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression, we found that compared with the economy frame, the public health frame led to greater polarization in risk perception and policy support between liberals and conservatives, and these relationships were mediated by environmental value and belief in climate science. Similarly, distance framing also increased ideological polarization in risk perception and policy support.