The Role Of Message Framing In Climate Change Communications: An Assessment Of The Effectiveness Of Outcome Framing And Risk Framing In Communicating Climate Change Issues To The Public Of Te Tai Tokerau, Aotearoa

Climate change is arguably the most pressing environmental issue of our time. Human behaviour has progressively worsened climate change to the point where urgent action is required, and order to achieve climate change action, individuals need to be engaged with climate change. However, there is a clear disconnect between climate change engagement and climate change action and behaviour change. This disconnection is of particular interest in Aotearoa, where reductions in emission have faced a complex history and a multitude of setbacks. One of the key barriers to engagement is the science-action gap, wherein individuals receive information about the issue of climate change, but this information does not result in the desired behaviour change or action. Therefore, it is necessary to assess how the information is communicated and whether this can influence engagement. The effectiveness of climate change communication presents a clear barrier to engagement. In an attempt to influence engagement via climate change communication, there is a growing body of research that investigates the way climate change communication is framed. Although this area of research is growing, the research on message framing in the context of Aotearoa is lacking. This research investigated what types of message framing are effective for communicating climate change issues to the public of Te Tai Tokerau, focusing specifically on the relationship between climate change and droughts. This research examined the effectiveness of two commonly used communication tactics: outcome framing and risk framing. The results of this research indicate that the framing of a message about climate change and drought in Te Tai Tokerau did not influence people’s levels of engagement with climate change. Specifically, there was no significant difference between the effectiveness of gain framed messages and loss framed messages; nor was there a significant difference between the high risk framed messages and the low risk messages.