More than scientists: How message and messenger attributes influence viewers’ climate change intentions

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331672 September 10, 2025 1 / 20 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Hine DW, Phillips KL, Hine MJ, Bhattacharya O, Phillips WJ, Driver AB, et al. (2025) More than scientists: How message and messenger attributes influence viewers’ climate change intentions. PLoS One 20(9): e0331672. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331672 Editor: Mike Farjam, University of Hamburg: Universitat Hamburg, GERMANY Received: November 24, 2024 Accepted: August 19, 2025 Published: September 10, 2025 Copyright: © 2025 Hine et al . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data availability statement: The dataset can be accessed through the Open Science Framework Repository. A. Location of the data (i.e. the repository name): Open Science Framework Repository. B. The DOI/accession number: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/MT62D. RESEARCH ARTICLE More than scientists: How message and messenger attributes influence viewers’ climate change intentions Donald W. Hine 1☯, Keri L. Phillips 2☯, Michael J. Hine 3☯, Oindrila Bhattacharya 1☯*, Wendy J. Phillips2‡, Aaron B. Driver4‡, Anthony D. G. Marks2‡, Gary Phillips5‡ 1 School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand, 2 School of Psychology, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia,

3 Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 4 UNE Business School, University of New England: Armidale, New South Wales, Australia, 5 Charles Sturt University, Albury- Wodonga, New South Wales, Australia ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. ‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work. * oindrila.bhattacharya@canterbury.ac.nz Abstract Effectively motivating public action on climate change remains a central challenge for science communicators. This study investigated how message and messenger attributes shape viewers’ motivation to act on climate change, and whether these effects vary as a function of political orientation. Using a policy-capturing design, 581 U.S. adults each viewed six randomly selected short videos from the More than Scientists website, in which climate scientists described the personal relevance of climate change. Linguistic features of the messages were analyzed using the Lin- guistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software, and messenger attributes (e.g., age, sex, attractiveness) were independently coded. Multilevel modeling revealed that messenger characteristics—particularly being older, male, attractive, and filmed in natural settings—were the strongest predictors of viewer motivation, explaining over 21% of within-person variance. By contrast, linguistic message attributes had weak predictive power overall, though messages with future-focused language and greater length were modestly more motivating. Political orientation moderated some

message effects: affiliation-oriented language increased motivation for left-leaning viewers, while achievement-oriented language was more effective for right-leaning viewers. These findings underscore the importance of peripheral cues in climate communication and support targeted messaging strategies that align with audience values and identities.