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

Next, we examined whether emphasizing different options for revenue use and messaging affected attitudes toward the policy and whether the Five Canadas of Climate Change responded differently to these treatments, both at low and higher levels of policy stringency (Table 5). Our results suggest that overall messaging effects only occurred when policy strin- gency was relatively higher. As Model 1 (Table 5) shows, none of the experimentally manipu- lated messages reached statistical significance when policy stringency was low. However, when the policy was said to increase the gasoline price by a higher amount (i.e., 11 cents), both the “Invest in solutions” and the “Relative price” messages significantly affected the dependent variable, respectively increasing the level of supportive attitudes by 9% and 11%. The “Equal dividend” message had no effect on attitudes at either level of policy stringency. To examine how each segment responded to these messages, we again included interaction terms, this time multiplying the second factor (i.e., options for revenue use and messaging) by the five audiences. While results from Table 5 suggested that none of the messages had a main effect on attitudes when stringency was low (2 cents), Fig 1 shows that the “Invest in solutions” and the “Relative price” messages had an influence on attitudes at a lower level of policy strin- gency, but only among the Alarmed. Rather than increasing support for the policy, however, these messages decreased support by about 11 percentage points among this relatively more engaged segment.

Turning to the analysis of messaging effects under the higher price (11 cents per litre) con- dition, the “Invest in solutions” message increased carbon tax support among the Concerned, though it had no effect on the other segments (Fig 2). Despite this, the green reinvestment message was very impactful among the Concerned: the Concerned exposed to the “Invest in solutions” message scored 18% higher on the attitude index relative to the Concerned in the “no message” group. The “Equal dividend” and the “Relative price” messages were also effec- tive with the Concerned under the moderate price treatment, increasing the level of supportive attitudes by about 9% and 10% respectively. Finally, exposure to the “Relative price” message also led to a 16% increase in positive attitudes toward carbon taxes among Doubtful. Discussion Our analysis of the data measuring how Canadians think and act toward climate change revealed that the Canadian population can be divided into five distinct segments: the Alarmed (25%), Concerned (45%), Disengaged (5%), Doubtful (17%) and Dismissive (8%). These results are broadly consistent with Global Warming’s Six Americas [15] and akin to typologies identified in Australia [12, 14] and Germany [16], though we did not find a Cautious segment in Canada. The Cautious–who believe in climate change but view it as a distant problem–com- prised between a quarter and a fifth of the American, Australian and German populations at the time these studies were conducted. The most recent segmentation in Australia [14], how-

ever, found three groups rather than six: the Alarmed, the Uncommitted and the Dismissive. While a Dismissive group was found in the U.S, Australia and Canada (as our data showed), this group was notably absent in the segmentation analysis conducted in Germany, reflecting differences in climate change audiences across countries. To be sure, the potential for cross-national comparisons remains limited, as different vari- ables were used to create the segmentations and some studies draw on data collected several years apart (e.g., the German segmentation draws on data collected in 2011, whereas our data were collected in 2017). Although caution should be exercised in comparing segments across studies, the fact that we did not find a Cautious segment similar to that identified in the United States is broadly consistent with previously reported differences in attitudes toward climate change across Canada and the United States [e.g., 18]. With respect to the Cautious, Maibach PLOS ONE The Five Canadas of Climate Change PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273977 November 23, 2022 12 / 21