The Five Canadas of Climate Change: Using audience segmentation to inform communication on climate policy

RESEARCH ARTICLE The Five Canadas of Climate Change: Using audience segmentation to inform communication on climate policy Marjolaine Martel-MorinID*☯, Erick Lachapelle☯ Department of Political Science, Universite´ de Montre´al, Montreal, Quebec, Canada ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * marjolaine.martel-morin@umontreal.ca Abstract This study examines how unique audience segments within the Canadian population think and act toward climate change, and explores whether and how the level of audience engagement moderates the effect of various messages on support for climate policy. Draw- ing on a random probability sample of Canadian residents (N = 1207) conducted in October 2017, we first identify and describe five distinct audiences that vary in their attitudes, percep- tions and behaviours with respect to climate change: the Alarmed (25%), Concerned (45%), Disengaged (5%), Doubtful (17%) and Dismissive (8%). We then explore how each seg- ment responds to different messages about carbon pricing in Canada. We find that mes- sages alluding to earmarking (i.e., “Invest in solutions”) or leveling the playing field for alternative energy sources (i.e., “Relative price”) increase support for a higher carbon price among the population as a whole. However, these messages decreased support for carbon pricing among more engaged audiences (e.g., Alarmed) when a low carbon price was speci- fied to the respondent. Meanwhile, the “Relative price” is the only message that increased policy support among less engaged audiences–the Concerned and the Doubtful. In addition

to highlighting the importance of tailoring and targeting messages for differently engaged segments, these results suggest that communicating around the specific consequences of carbon taxes for the prices of some goods may be a fruitful way to enhance support for car- bon taxes among relatively less engaged audiences. Introduction A well-established finding in social psychology suggests that people with different values, ide- ologies and worldviews process uncertain or conflicting evidence very differently [1, 2]. This research suggests that people tend to assimilate new information in a way that is consistent with their pre-existing attitudinal positions, a process referred to as “biased assimilation” [3]. The role of prior attitudes in the interpretation and assimilation of new information helps to explain why values, worldviews and ideology are so important in the formation of attitudes toward climate change and climate policy [4, 5]. In addition to being stronger predictors of PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273977 November 23, 2022 1 / 21 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Martel-Morin M, Lachapelle E (2022) The Five Canadas of Climate Change: Using audience segmentation to inform communication on climate policy. PLoS ONE 17(11): e0273977. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273977 Editor: Maurizio Naldi, LUMSA: Libera Universita Maria Santissima Assunta, ITALY Received: March 1, 2022 Accepted: August 19, 2022 Published: November 23, 2022 Copyright: © 2022 Martel-Morin, Lachapelle. 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: Data relevant to this study are available from the Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/9CSTGE. Funding: - This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council under Grant #435-2017-1388 - Grant awarded to EL - URL: https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/home-accueil- eng.aspx - The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.