Jiu-Jitsu Persuasion: Leveraging values and social identity for effective climate change communication and action [Author Accepted Manuscript]

Climate change is human-caused and requires a unified response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit adverse impacts. Climate change scepticism has delayed the adoption of climate mitigation efforts. Social identity theory and the attitude roots model were used to evaluate two communication strategies intended to reduce climate change scepticism, increase climate change acceptance, and promote behavioural willingness to support climate mitigation. A pre-post and 1-week follow-up experimental design was used with 189 participants, aged 18 to 86 (Mage = 40.60, SDage = 16.18; 65.6% Female) from Australia and Canada, randomly allocated to an education-based message or a right-wing value-based message. Climate attitudes and behavioural willingness to support climate mitigation did not differ between the education-based and value-based messages. Salience was significantly associated with climate attitudes and behavioural willingness within the education-based message but not within the value-based message. Although neither message influenced climate attitudes or behavioural willingness, the results support social identity theory and the attitude roots model. Higher salience promotes directionally motivated acceptance while lower salience promotes directionally motivated rejection of the education-based message. Findings show that education-based messages may contribute to polarisation in climate attitudes and behavioural willingness, while value-based messages may lead to increased common ground. Future interventions should focus on value-based messages that appeal to individuals’ identity to elicit commonality in attitudes with the aim of increasing both climate change acceptance and behavioural willingness.