Exploitation of mortality salience in communication on climate change

Abstract

This research focuses on the effectiveness of anxiety-inducing communication for mobilizing consumers against climate change. Based on terror management theory (TMT), we show that this register can be counterproductive in generating consumer choices that run counter to pro-environmental logics. In particular, we report the results of an experiment ( N = 132) testing the influence of the type of communication (anxiogenic vs informative) on consumer choices (pro-materialistic vs pro-environmental). The results reveal that people’s consumption choices depend on their cultural worldviews (i.e. materialistic vs environmentalist) and the type of communication used. The effectiveness of communication strategies on climate change is then discussed in terms of people’s cultural worldview.