Exploring the Influence of Aggressive and Target-Framing Messages on Proenvironmental Behaviors

Abstract

As the tenor of climate change debates continues to intensify, it is critical to understand how shifts in style and target affect individuals’ proenvironmental behaviors. Using two online experiments, we investigated how these changes can violate expectations in ways that affect persuasive power. The results suggest that an aggressive style is likely to expectancy violation, which negatively affects individuals’ private- and public-sphere behavioral intentions. Differences in the framing of responsibility between individuals and institutions had limited impacts. The findings offer insights and practical implications for environmental communicators on how communication styles and framing affect efforts to shift climate change behaviors.