AMS Photo Slideshow Creator.4.25.2-[Multi] Download
Tanesha Prately
Copyright: 2021 Frantz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: CMF, JP, and KL received funding for this research from Oberlin College Office of Foundation, Government, and Corporate Grants ( ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Community Voices (CV) is a novel approach to conveying pro-environmental and pro-social messaging content for display on digital signage. The approach draws content, in the form of quotes paired with photographs, from local community members and can be easily replicated in a variety of communities and contexts. This technology has been operational in the City of Oberlin OH (population 8,300) since 2015 and has since been deployed on a pilot basis in Cleveland OH and in three other college-town communities. The Oberlin version can be viewed online (URL: www.environmentaldashboard.org/community-voices). The methods used to develop CV content as well as the technology have been described in detail elsewhere [5]. In brief, the psychological goal of CV is to discover, communicate and thereby strengthen pro-environmental and pro-community thought, identity and action. Most people are already engaged in at least some sort of pro-environmental thought and action in their daily lives that can serve as the basis for developing positive social norms. CV is explicitly designed to build and reinforce these norms to help move communities towards the goal of sustainability and resilience. CV also explicitly embraces diversity to highlight and leverage the unique history and character of a particular community so as to foster pride in accomplishments and encourage further aspiration.
The top panel is one of 16 slides included in the set developed for the experimental condition receiving a combination of injunctive framing of messages attributed to adults. The bottom slide was part of the set delivered to the experimental condition receiving injunctive framing of messages attributed to children.
Although there is considerable research supporting the eight principles used to develop Community Voices content, the general question of whether this approach affects social norms had not been tested. Furthermore, there are many remaining questions with respect to the relative efficacy of different ways of framing messages and linking text to messengers. The studies reported here were designed to address the general question of whether CV content influences perceptions of social norms, concern about environmental issues, and commitment to take action. The studies were also designed to assess specific hypotheses about the impact of message framing and messenger attribution. The three general questions we asked and motivating rationale are explained in the sections that follow. The third question related to framing considers three alternative approaches to message framing.
The first goal of these studies was to test whether exposure to Community Voices content does in fact shift social norms, as well as thoughts, feelings, and intentions around environmental issues. Social norms have proven to be an effective and versatile method of shifting pro-environmental behavior in many [3, 11, 12] but not all (e.g. [13]) applications. Further, once norms get established, they tend to be self-reinforcing; this means that an initial short-term investment of resources and effort can result in lasting behavior change (e.g. [14, 15]). Social norms can be descriptive (a message conveying what most people are thinking and doing), or injunctive (a message conveying what people should do [16]; there is empirical support that both kinds of norms promote pro-environmental behavior [17, 18]. The Community Voices approach primarily focuses on establishing descriptive norms by simply making pro-environmental thought and action in the community visible. However, in Study 1 we tested the impact of framing messages injunctively.
What is less clear is whether children may have similar impacts outside of a care-giver relationship. In the research cited above children are conduits of information to caregivers. We could find no research that tested child messengers speaking directly to non-caregiver adults. We discuss below arguments both for and against the effectiveness of children as spokespeople under these conditions.
Additionally, research indicates that messengers are more likely to persuade if they are likable [2]; children are typically seen as endearing and likable. Finally, research on helping behavior suggests that perceptions of deservingness [45, 46] and feelings of empathy [47] elicit helping behavior. Once again children may be seen as particularly deserving protection, and may also elicit empathy and therefore protective behavior.
The same general message can be worded in many different ways; research on framing suggests that these choices are likely to affect how the message is received [51] and the subsequent choices people make (e.g. [52, 53]). This is particularly true with respect to climate change [54, 55]. We chose to examine the impact of the following four alternative message frames and to consider how these might differ in impact when attributed to child vs. adult messengers.
The Oberlin College Institutional Review Board approved this research (IRB Protocol #SP14PCF/EJP/ERS-02). All participants recruited provided electronic informed consent prior to participating in the study. Data, metadata, syntax, and output files for all three studies are archived with Dryad,
To address Question 1, whether exposure to CV shift norms, concern, and commitment to act, Study 1 compared those exposed to CV to a non-exposure control group. To address Questions 2, 3a, and 3b, it also compared several approaches to message framing and attribution. Specifically, it compared injunctive vs non-injunctive framing of messages and political vs. non-political messages and examined whether children might be more effective than adults at delivering these types of messages. The study used a 2 (messenger: child vs. adult) X 2 (politics: political vs. apolitical) X 2 (voicing: injunctive vs. non-injunctive) between-participants design, with an additional non-exposure control condition. This resulted in eight separate exposure conditions plus one control condition. We hypothesized that exposure to CV would increase norms, concern, and commitment to act (tested by the main effect comparing Community Voices exposure to no exposure). We hypothesized that children would be more effective messengers than adults (a main effect of messenger). We hypothesized that both an injunctive frame and a political frame would be more effective when the message was attributed to children (the 2-way interactions between messenger and politics and messenger and voicing). S1 Text presents power analyses indicating that our main effect and a priori simple effect analyses were sufficiently powered to detect an effect.
Each slideshow included 16 slides; each slide was shown for 15 seconds, in the form of a 4 min video presentation embedded via YouTube. A separate slideshow was created for each of the eight experimental conditions. The slideshows simulated the type of content shown on CV; each slide consisted of one image paired with one quote (e.g., Fig 1). For the purpose of this study, the content of the quotes was constructed by our research team, but the type of phrasing was designed to plausibly match content we have previously developed through interviews with community members. Slides used in the different conditions were as similar as possible to each other in general content; they differed with respect to the photographic image (child vs. adult messenger) and/or how messages were framed (political vs. non-political, injunctive vs. non-injunctive). All 16 slides had content consistent with the framing for that condition. See Table 1 for examples of the text content depicted on slides, S1 Images for the images used in Study 1 as well as Studies 2 and 3), and S2 Text for a complete list of all message content.
The child vs. adult condition was manipulated by associating text with a photo of either an adult or a child and through the attribution inserted below the quoted text; this attribution consisted of either a grade (3rd - 6th) after the quotes accompanying all 16 images, or it consisted of only a name (implying adult). Ten of the slides in each slide show depicted images of people (either all adults or all children). The number of people, race, gender, and activities depicted in a photo associated with each quote were matched in slides that contained images of adults and children (e.g., Fig 1). The remaining 6 photographs included in each slide show were of natural environments, and were held constant across all conditions. The quotes were identical in adult and child conditions and designed such that they could plausibly be attributed to either age level.
In addition to the collection of measures, demographic information was collected on gender identity, age, ethnicity, geographic location, urban vs. rural, education, and political orientation (measured on a seven-point Likert scale from liberal to conservative).
Consistent with our hypothesis, those exposed to CV slides exhibited significant differences from those in the control condition for many, but not all, of the dependent variables (see Table 2 for a summary of the results). Relative to the control condition, participants exposed to CV exhibited a higher level of environmental concern regarding issues that were directly mentioned in the slideshow and also for environmental issues that were not mentioned in the slideshow. Those exposed to CV content reported a higher sense of efficacy and responsibility for environmental protection. The exposed group also perceived environmental protection as more normative among both adults (marginally significant, p = .08) and children (significant, p < .001). However, though the means were in the predicted direction, those exposed to CV did not report significantly higher levels of commitment to action or optimism about the future.
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