Woman in flood, smoking by Fabrice Fabola via Climate Visuals.
What magic words can add 11% to the number of people supporting 100% renewable power, and take support for ending deforestation up to 84% of respondents? Dedicated specialist researchers at Climate Outreach have taken a deep dive with their seven segments of the British population and tested some different framings of the climate crisis, in the run-up to COP26. What did they find?
Climate Outreach tested a number of different ways of talking about COP26 in Glasgow, and the approach which got the strongest positive response was to talk about nature. For example, the most effective language to use was:
"...ending deforestation, and protecting and restoring land and ocean that is so vital to the survival of our planet. If we don’t protect nature, it can’t protect us."
The other very resonant message was around global cooperation:
"Climate change doesn’t respect borders...We all share the same planet, so we must all do what we can to fix climate change."
These ways of framing global action were significantly more resonant across the board than messages about green investment or global leadership.
In detailed tables, the full report shows how much additional support there was for COP26 priorities like ending deforestation and moving to 100% renewable power. Being exposed to the 'nature' narrative took support for ending deforestation from an already high 77% to 84%. And it added 11% to support for 100% renewables, from 59% to 70%.
The research also looked at who people trusted to tell them about climate change. No surprises that David Attenborough topped that chart by some margin.
There is a summary, a detailed report and a webinar on 30th September to help you understand the findings. See 'coming up' section below for webinar details.
Use the toolkit for your own segmentation
Climate Outreach worked with the European Climate Foundation, More in Common and YouGov to develop and validate their segmentation model. The seven segments are:
Progressive activists
Civic pragmatists
Disengaged battlers
Established liberals
Loyal nationals
Disengaged traditionalists
Backbone conservatives
The full methodology is available as part of the Britain Talks Climate toolkit, and this includes sixteen 'golden questions' which enable you to understand the audience you're talking to. As well as the questions themselves, there's a nifty easy-to-use excel spreadsheet so you can analyse the responses really easily. This open-access resource is available to any non-profit use in exchange for an accurate citation and using it as designed. The toolkit is here.
Previous segmentation work
Britain Talks Climate isn't the first segmentation developed by psychologists and market researchers to help communicate climate and sustainability issues. Back in 2007, Defra and others were looking at the most effective ways to communicate messages about individual behaviour change, for example. And work by Chris Rose and Pat Dade, based on Values Modes, has also been influential. I summarised this in 2008. And of course, over time, the UK population has changed so it's great to get an up-to-date segmentation.
Other handy guidance
The team at charity On Road Media has also put together a resource on communicating climate change successfully: as they put it, 'turning up the urgency, without bringing people down'. Their 'six ways to change hearts and minds about climate change' is here.
References
You can get more detail about Climate Outreach's COP26 work by downloading the full report: Wang, S., Latter, B., Nicholls, J., Sawas, A. and Shaw, C. (2021). Britain Talks COP26: New insights on what the UK public want from the climate summit. Oxford: Climate Outreach.
Making the Path by Walking
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