Persuasion Under Pressure: Trust-Based Communication for Climate Resilience
Presentation Type
Long presentation (faculty/staff) 15-20 minutes
In Person or Zoom Presentation
In-Person
Campus
Daytona Beach
Status
Faculty
Faculty/Staff Department
Humanities & Communication
Presentation Description/Abstract
Despite general agreement that trust in a source increases a message’s persuasiveness, developing strategic messaging to increase perceived trustworthiness remains a challenge. This project tests a novel trust-building script for motivating extreme heat risk motivation to identify opportunities to simultaneously motivate sustainable adaptations to climate risk and rebuild trust in climate governance. Specifically, this study (N = 699) used a randomized controlled experiment to investigate if explicit appeals to trust and direct references to source trustworthiness might inadvertently trigger a backfire effect, reducing rather than increasing perceived trustworthiness. This presentation will share the experiment’s results as statistical analyses and applied best practice recommendations for sustainability stakeholders.
Keywords
extreme heat, climate communication, risk perception, public trust
Persuasion Under Pressure: Trust-Based Communication for Climate Resilience
Despite general agreement that trust in a source increases a message’s persuasiveness, developing strategic messaging to increase perceived trustworthiness remains a challenge. This project tests a novel trust-building script for motivating extreme heat risk motivation to identify opportunities to simultaneously motivate sustainable adaptations to climate risk and rebuild trust in climate governance. Specifically, this study (N = 699) used a randomized controlled experiment to investigate if explicit appeals to trust and direct references to source trustworthiness might inadvertently trigger a backfire effect, reducing rather than increasing perceived trustworthiness. This presentation will share the experiment’s results as statistical analyses and applied best practice recommendations for sustainability stakeholders.