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

(N = 64,083) indicated that overall framing exerted on average medium-sized effects on citi- zens’ political attitudes across contexts (d = 0.41, which is equivalent to an f2 of 0.04). While our analysis is sufficiently powered to detect similar medium-sized effects among the Alarmed, Concerned and Doubtful, our sample is too small to detect such effects among the Disengaged and Dismissive. We take this into account when interpreting our results. Results The Five Canadas of Climate Change We begin with results from the audience segmentation. Our analysis identified five unique audiences within the Canadian population, each of which understands and engages with the climate change issue in their own way: the Alarmed (25%), Concerned (45%), Disengaged (5%), Doubtful (17%) and Dismissive (8%). This distribution provides a good sense of the rela- tive size of different climate change segments in Canada, their socio-demographic makeup, as well as their key motivations, behaviours and policy preferences (S5-S8 Tables in S1 File). The Alarmed represent about a quarter of the Canadian population. Individuals in this group are fully convinced that climate change is happening and already harming people living in Canada, believe it requires significant changes in government policy and are already taking some personal action to reduce the threat. Of all groups, the Alarmed segment is made up of the largest proportion of respondents who are very confident in their belief that Earth is warm- ing (87%) and that such warming is mostly the result of human activities (86%). Most of them

feel very (42%) or somewhat (54%) well-informed about climate change and the majority dis- cusses climate change very (56%) or somewhat (39%) often with family and friends. A plurality of Canadians (about 2 in 5) falls into the Concerned category. Like the Alarmed, the Concerned believe human-caused climate change is real and support climate policy, but they are substantially less certain and engaged on the issue relative to the Alarmed. For instance, while most believe that human activity is behind rising temperature on Earth (68%) and that climate change is already harming people living in Canada (64%), fewer are very (54%) confident in their climate change beliefs. The Concerned are also distinct in their level of involvement regarding the issue. As compared to the Alarmed, very few say they feel very informed about the issue of climate change (8% vs 42%) or say they discuss the issue very often (6% vs 56%). Perhaps in part because they appear to be less informed about the issue, the Con- cerned differ from the Alarmed in their propensity to engage in climate-friendly actions. Meanwhile, the Disengaged are less certain of their beliefs about climate change. Relative to all other segments, they are the most likely to indicate they are unsure as to whether or not Earth is warming (23%), or to refuse to pronounce themselves on whether they are confident that climate change is happening (28%). This propensity to indicate being “not sure” is also evident on a number of other key variables, such as the timing of impacts and personal risk

perceptions. Another important distinction between the Disengaged and the two most engaged segments is that they are more than two (three) times less likely than the Concerned (Alarmed) to believe that climate change is mostly caused by human activities (26%). They are also less likely than the Concerned and Alarmed to report taking action themselves to help address climate change. In terms of more skeptical audiences, relatively few of the Doubtful are very (12%) or some- what (56%) confident that the average temperature on Earth is rising, and they are less likely than the national average (58%) to attribute this warming to human activities (25%). In line with their skepticism regarding the existence of anthropogenic climate change, they are also less likely than the Alarmed, Concerned, and Disengaged segments to engage in actions to address the issue. PLOS ONE The Five Canadas of Climate Change PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273977 November 23, 2022 9 / 21