A cautionary note about messages of hope

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. In the words of the authors…

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4. General discussion

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These data should not be interpreted as implying that hope-related messages can never be an effective communication strategy. First, we used messages that focused on a specific form of hope relating to success in curbing carbon emissions. It remains to be seen whether other dimensions of hope might have more success at catalyzing mitigation action. Second, it could be that hope-related messages might be effective for some subsamples of the population even if it is ineffective at a general level. It is possible, for example, that hope-related messages might be effective if they are tailored to those people who are at risk of withdrawing from the climate change conversation due to feelings of despair or “apocalypse fatigue”. It would also be interesting to examine whether the link between optimistic messages and mitigation motivations are moderated by political ideology or environmental values. Similar to our argument above, it is possible that hope-related messages may be more effective for those who are particularly worried about climate change such as political liberals or people with strong environmental values (Hornsey et al., in press). Finally, Study 2 was a single-dose experiment, and so it reveals little about whether effects would persist over time. It is possible that the effectiveness of hope-related messages might be slower to emerge than more pessimistic messages, but that their effects are more sustained. What our data do suggest, however, is that any immediate pay-offs for a climate change message are more detectable with a pessimistic message than with a message that is framed around the improved outlook with respect to carbon emissions.

It should be noted that the effect of the climate change message was weak overall: although the pessimistic message resulted in reliably stronger mitigation motivations than the other two messages, the effect size was small. This is consistent with a range of studies on message framing, which typically find small-to-moderate increases in mitigation intentions after a climate change message (e.g., Gifford and Comeau, 2011; Hart, 2011; Hart and Nisbet, 2012; Hornsey et al., in press; Morton et al., 2011; Myers et al., 2012; Spence and Pidgeon, 2010). Furthermore, it should be emphasized that the optimistic message did not significantly differ from the neutral condition on the key outcome measure of mitigation motivation. So although there was no evidence that the optimistic message was helpful, neither was there any evidence that it damaged mitigation motivation.

4.1. Conclusions

Hope helps ward off despair and defeatism, and so hope-related messages might be a promising strategy for encouraging constructive responses to climate change threats. Specifically, the fact that carbon emissions have plateaued for the first time in four decades represents a mass communication opportunity. But when this information was presented to community members, the pay-offs in terms of feelings of hope were overwhelmed by the fact that the optimistic message diluted the sense of risk and distress that is effective in motivating mitigation efforts. In short, recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is an exciting development, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective mass communication strategy.

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