Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Partisan division on climate change has led to a paralysis in the policy process, particularly in the United States. A lack of bipartisan support has prevented the passage of climate change mitigation policies through Congress for decades. To increase support for climate change policies across partisan lines, political communicators have focused on framing the issue along alternative dimensions, such as avoiding health risks and reaping the economic benefits of green technologies, among others. Unfortunately, recent studies demonstrate that such framing is often ineffective at increasing public support for climate change policies because the framing effects are diluted by salient partisan identities. By ignoring the interaction between identity salience (the aspect of an individual’s identity that is most likely to drive attitudes and preferences at a given time) and frame acceptance, policymakers have overlooked an important factor that can determine the success or failure of efforts to broaden support for climate change policies.

This paper addresses this challenge by emphasizing the need to match climate change frames with salient, non-partisan identities. Can increasing the salience of a non-partisan identity increase frame acceptance and overcome partisan barriers to climate change policy support? For example, does priming an individual’s identity as a parent, combined with a frame about the effects of climate change on future generations, increase the likelihood of support for climate change mitigation policies? This study uses an innovative identity-priming experiment methodology to manipulate the salience of various identities and better understand how identity salience leads to support for environmental policies. I hypothesize that presenting climate change mitigation messages when a relevant identity is primed increases climate change policy support, particularly among political conservatives who otherwise would react to climate messages primarily on partisan cues. Through a series of survey experiments, I report on the differential effects on climate change policy support of subjects receiving no message, a pro-climate mitigation message, or the combination of first priming a non-partisan identity before presenting a relevant pro-climate mitigation message.

This project has significant implications for how we communicate about the risks and urgency of climate change, and how to increase policy support for climate change policies across the political spectrum. Currently, the issue of climate change activates highly partisan identity cues. Climate change is not an inherently partisan issue, however, and by relating climate change messages to an alternative (non-partisan) aspect of an individual’s identity, policymakers can uncover new ways to increase support for climate change policies.