Effects of opinion statements on laypeople's acceptance of a climate engineering technology. Comparing the source credibility of researchers, politicians and a citizens' jury

[Andrew Lockley]

https://jcom.sissa.it/archive/20/01/JCOM_2001_2021_A03

Effects of opinion statements on laypeople's acceptance of a climate engineering technology. Comparing the source credibility of researchers, politicians and a citizens' jury

Article

Authors: 

Geraldine Klaus, Lisa Oswald, Andreas Ernst and Christine Merk

Abstract: 

To examine the influence of different actors' fictitious statements about research and deployment of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), we conducted an online survey in Germany. Participants assess researchers and a citizens' jury to be more credible than politicians. Credibility has a strong positive effect on SAI acceptance in both pro-SAI and contra-SAI conditions. Reading the statement against SAI-deployment led to significantly lower acceptance scores compared to reading the pro-statement. However, the difference between messages was unexpectedly small, indicating that the message content was not fully adopted while underlying traits and attitudes mainly shaped acceptance even despite, or because of, low levels of knowledge.

Keywords: 

Environmental communication

Public perception of science and technology

DOI: 

https://doi.org/10.22323/2.20010203

Received: 

8 August 2019

Accepted: 

3 November 2020

Published: 

25 January 2021