Joe: Welcome back to part two of a conversation with Ed Maibach, Director of the Center of Excellence in Climate Change Communication Research at George Mason University. We were talking about a recent national survey conducted by the center, and about the important issue of whether Americans feel they can make a difference about climate.
I’m wondering if when people have a sense of personal efficacy and then they don’t see the results they were hoping for, can there be a backlash or a negative reaction? I’m thinking of the situation of changing your lightbulbs to compact fluorescents and discovering that may not get us very far. Is a negative reaction a concern?
Ed: That's a very valid concern. And that is why we attempted in this study to differentiate self-efficacy, meaning people's belief in their own ability to perform a behavior. . . we differentiated that from a collective efficacy, people's belief in our collective ability to achieve an outcome or to perform a behavior. And the research… There's been much less research on collective efficacy. But what research has been done has shown that that's a very important consideration. It's all well and good if I believe in my own abilities, but if I believe that the society, of which I am a member, does not have the wherewithal to succeed, it's fairly certain that my own personal efforts or my motivation to engage in personal efforts will wane before too terribly long.
So, I would suggest that one of the things we need to work on is building our sense of collective efficacy; that this is, in fact, a problem that we in the United States are perfectly capable of solving. And moreover, the world is waiting for us to rise to that occasion.
Joe: Did you see in the survey responses a relationship between people’s perceptions of a threat from global warming and their sense of an ability to do something about it?
Ed: Approximately forty percent – that's
four out of ten people – had a sense of high threat. They perceived
a lot of danger associated with global warming, and they had a high sense
of self-efficacy. In addition, an additional forty percent of our respondents
had a low sense of global warming as a threat and had low sense of efficacy
associated with our ability to address it. So, those were the two largest
segments by far. Which to me says that we clearly have a challenge. We've
got one group who seems to be. . . you might call them the choir; they understand
the risk, they feel quite efficacious and we know in fact, actually, that
they're doing a better job of embracing and incorporating various appropriate
behaviors into their lives. Their counterparts, however, the other
forty percent of the population, are much less likely to be embracing those
behaviors.
So it tells me that we need to put a significant amount of effort into understanding
the world view of those people who don’t sense a threat and who don't
feel that there's much we can do about it. Is it the lack of threat
that makes the self-efficacy question irrelevant in their minds? Or
are these independent assessments in their minds and we need to address both?
Joe: Did those differences break down along the lines of political party affiliation?
Ed: Well, Republicans and Democrats have very different beliefs about global warming-- both their threat beliefs as well as their efficacy beliefs. They were, by and large, performing an equivalent number of relevant behaviors. So, for example, looking at one of the behaviors that we asked about, whether or not you're using less energy at home, in terms of your lighting, air conditioning and heat, and there was really almost no difference whatsoever between the proportion of Republicans and the proportion of Democrats who said they were using less energy at home.
Joe: Was the survey representative of the political affiliations of the public as a whole, including independents?
Ed: Yes, absolutely. This survey was done through a . . . it's a mail survey. It's representative of the population at large. And we think this is actually a fairly unique dataset because of the size. The number of people we've interviewed gives us the opportunity to look at relatively uncommon points of view that are held. . . even though they're uncommon, because we surveyed twelve thousand adults, we still have quite a few adults who have expressed that point of view for us to consider and try to understand what it means to them.
Joe: Are there other insights from the survey that might be particularly relevant to those who are trying to communicate with the public about climate?
Ed: Well, this finding, that while Democrats and Republicans have very different beliefs about global warming, they are nevertheless performing approximately the same number of appropriate actions, to me is very intriguing. Because I believe what it's telling us is that with regard to the Democrats, it's harder to perform these behaviors than perhaps people understand and acknowledge. And, therefore, the Democrats’ motivation is not being fully translated into action or behavior.
Conversely, my read on Republicans actually over-performing their beliefs about global warming is that they probably have different motivations. So their motivations for embracing those actions, things like, as I said, using less energy at home and buying less gasoline and buying environmentally friendly products, they undoubtedly have some motivations for doing those things. I'm not sure we necessarily understand what those motivations are, however.
Joe: You used the term “global warming,” rather than “climate change,” in the survey, is that right?
Ed: The intention was to avoid the term “climate change” at all because people… It is not necessarily a term that is as widely understood among people in the public as “global warming.” There is research showing that it is a term that people interpret as less, a situation of less concern than global warming. Because climate change, in fact, seems quite neutral. Well, things do change. We all know things change and the climate, therefore, it's not surprising that the climate changes. But global warming, although in fact we know that's not a terribly alarming term to most people, because most of us like it warm, from what I understand (and I believe Tony Leiserowitz has done some research on this point directly), people are more alarmed by the term “global warming” than by the term “climate change.”
Joe: Let me read you a quote from one of your
articles:
“Mass media interventions that seek to influence people indirectly—by
creating beneficial changes in the places (or environments) in which people
live and work—have equal if not greater potential to promote beneficial
changes in [population health]
behaviors, but these are currently less explored options.” Would you
like to elaborate on that point in terms of climate change?
Ed: Yes, I absolutely would like to elaborate on that. I was looking at some survey data that Tony Leiserowitz released last summer, which showed the public's preferences for various policy options. And, while the majority, the large majority, of the American people actually are looking for leadership and policy responses from our federal government, when you actually get down and you ask them about specifics, like raising the gasoline tax, for example, boy, that support just erodes…or evaporates pretty darn rapidly. So an example of using mass media in a way to indirectly influence population behavior would be an advocacy campaign to raise gasoline tax. Or, perhaps more fairly, to impose a carbon tax in general. Something that doesn't just pick on gasoline, but essentially makes it more expensive to burn any form of fossil fuel.
If that were successful, if the public were to rally behind that, demand that of our elected officials, and that were to be enacted, there's absolutely no question – the economists are quite clear on this point – our behavior will change as a result. And in the intended direction. We will move away from burning fossil fuels and we will embrace other forms of energy and other form of energy efficiency.
Joe: Let’s talk about an example of how public communication about climate might be done. Let’s focus on preparing to adapt to climate change, say for example, sea-level rise in coastal communities, and you want to help people who own beach-front property begin to understand the risks and potential actions associated with that. You’re with a coastal management agency, or with a university Extension program, for example, and you don’t want to mess up. What are the first things you should think of to communicate effectively?
Ed: I would imagine that most people, most Americans, certainly are not creating the connections between the kinds of changes that are predicted to occur, as a result of global warming and where they currently live and how they currently live. So people on the coasts, for example, are probably not making the connection between the fact that, well, a high tide is a bit unsettling to me. A high tide with a good storm surge comes into my property and that's really catastrophic. If they were to connect that to the prediction, the IPCC prediction, that sea level will be rising by such a degree, I think anybody who was really thinking about that would. . . could not help but to find that unsettling. And could not help but to find that information to be of value in helping them develop long term plans, both for themselves – do I want to keep this property or not – as well as for their community. Should my community continue this dredging program? What should it do in terms of restoring the coastal environment so that we've got the buffer between the storm surge and our homes?
Joe: You’ve been talking about the thought process that the beachfront property owner might want to go through—that’s good. I guess my question was somewhat on the other side; do you have a model for the kind of team that needs to be involved in communicating such matters. I’m thinking of the team approach, for example, that Baruch Fischhoff has described in another of these podcasts. . . .
Ed: Well, I'm actually a huge follower of Baruch's team approach as well as the underlying formula. And the underlying formula (I'll let him speak to the team approach. . . ), but the underlying formula is take the time to invest the money, if necessary, in determining what members of your target audience do and do not know. So that when we do invest resources to communicate to them, we're not doing, as I said a moment ago, which is telling them what they already know and ignoring what they don't know. It's really…I consider it to be a communication diagnosis, if you will.
A moment ago you mentioned “information deficit” approaches to communication. And I think we all agree that an information model is overly simplistic and will not, in and of itself, get the job done. But a part of effective communication is diagnosing the specific information deficits so that we can insure that at least we're having. . . when we have a dialogue with various communities, that they have the information they need in order to assess the risks fairly and assess what their options are to respond to those risks.
Joe: What’s your model for the role of climate scientists? Should climate scientists get involved with persuasive communications or is their role something different?
Ed: You know, Baruch Fischhoff has spoken and written so eloquently about that issue, and he clearly feels that scientists need to be cautious about not overstepping their role as scientists, because it may ultimately undermine their effectiveness and their critical role that they play in society. Which, if I can oversimplify for a moment, is to discover and bring new information forward so that the rest of us can consider it and make decisions on it, or not, as we see fit.
And, obviously, if you are both the discoverer of knowledge as well as the advocate for what to do with that knowledge, there's a certain tension in that role. So I guess I'm going to say that I think climate scientists shouldn't necessarily beat themselves up too terribly much because in terms of any conflict they may feel about being both a scientist and an advocate, because to some degree I think they compromise their role and their unique value as scientists if they become, to the degree that they become aggressive advocates. Fortunately, there are others in society who are willing to and who are currently stepping into the breach and serving in that advocacy role.
Vice President Gore did a very nice job of that with An Inconvenient Truth, and in many of his other actions. He is an advocate, however, that is very appropriate for his base of supporters, namely Democrats. He, unfortunately, is an advocate who. . .his advocacy falls on deaf ears for most Republicans, simply because of their assessments of him as a Democratic actor versus somebody who really has a solid understanding of the risks that the world faces and what we should do about them.
Joe: Would your caution about the role of climate scientists in terms of becoming advocates, would it apply also to social scientists?
Ed: That’s a very good question. No, as a social scientist, it is probably more comfortable for those of us in the social sciences to slip into an advocacy role because we are not. . . at least in my case, I see myself as a translator. The science I am bringing to bear is a translational science and I can carry out that role dispassionately, advising communicators on how they can do a better job, or I can, and/or I can engage directly as an advocate myself. I personally and I believe most social and behavioral scientists feel more comfortable into slipping into an advocacy role every now and again.
Joe: What’s the best way that professionals who are concerned about communicating with the public about climate can stay up-to-date about developments in communication research?
Ed: I don't think most communicators, or most communication researchers for that matter, necessarily do a good job of sticking to the basics. So by the basics, if you…you'll allow me to oversimplify to its extreme, I would say the basics are simple, clear messages repeated often by a variety of trusted sources. And, you know, to the extent that we have seen successful communication initiatives in this country over the past many decades, I would suggest that they have stuck pretty closely to that formula. I'm not sure yet in the climate change community we've appreciated the simplicity at that…the robust power of that formula.
The extent to which people worry about something is a very strong predictor of the extent to which they engage in trying to solve the problem. And while a really significant number of Americans tell us…a good proportion of Americans tell us that climate change is a problem . . . global warming is a problem, excuse me, I would contend that. . . and, actually, Tony Leiserowitz's data indicates that they're really not all that worried about it. It's a problem because it's a threat to ice and to polar bears and to glaciers and to things that are far away from us and fundamentally not human. Whereas most of us haven't yet made that connection to the fact that global warming is a threat to us, here, to the places we love, to the people we love.
I don't exactly know what it is that we're missing and how to present that information to make that connection in people's minds. But I do believe that's one of the connections we need to make: that climate change, global warming, is in fact a threat to the people you love and to the places you love. Not just to places and creatures far away from you.
Joe: This has been a conversation with Dr. Ed Maibach of George Mason University, one of a series about Communicating Climate Change. I’m Joe Cone of Oregon Sea Grant, an ocean and coastal research and education program at Oregon State University. This and other climate podcasts, and their complete transcripts, can be found online at seagrant.oregonstate.edu. That’s “s-e-a-grant”: one word, “dot,” “oregonstate” as one word, “dot, edu.” Thank you for listening.