Climate change messages framed in an economic lens increase students' environmental awareness and decision-making

When teaching complex issues, environmental educators must consider using a framework that addresses the environmental, social, and economic aspects of problems to raise awareness and improve pro-environmental decision-making, two key goals of environmental education. In particular, cost information - the perceived trade-offs of environmental issues and solutions - is important for students to consider for sustainability. However, the way environmental education topics have been framed or messaged has not been widely studied. The researchers in this study framed climate change messages on costs in an economic context (the financial gain or loss) and an environmental context (the benefit or detriment to the ecosystem) to determine which framing technique helped increase environmental awareness and support decision-making in students.

Framing refers to the way in which a message is delivered to achieve a desired outcome. For example, the person developing the message may choose to emphasize or remove certain components in order to appeal to the audiences' interests, hone in on a specific scope, or highlight a particular subject. In this case, the researchers developed messaging about three issues of climate change (water shortages, sea level rise, and deforestation) under an economic frame using monetary units (the Korean won) and an environmental frame using biophysical units (liters, kilometers, and tons of carbon dioxide) to convey the costs of each issue. Within each framing technique, the researchers tested seven variables to answer their two research questions of which frame helps increase environmental awareness in students and which more positively effects decision-making in students. For environmental awareness, the variables included: 1) perceived certainty, the ability of a student to predict the situation and its consequences; 2) perceived tangibility, the way a student perceives the realness of the issue; 3) perceived danger, the emotional urgency a student feels regarding the issue; and, 4) perceived significance, the level of impact the issue has based on a student's interpretation. For decision-making, the variables included: 1) willingness to participate; 2) decision difficulty; and, 3) decision confidence.

The study took place in Gyeonggi Province, Korea during September and October 2017. The researchers worked with teachers in two high schools to provide reading materials and a follow-up questionnaire to first-year high school students, aged 15 to 16 years old. The students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: the environmental frame group (79 students) or the economic frame group (114 students). The questionnaire included messages the students would read, interpret, and answer questions about. The messages were about water shortages, sea level rise, and deforestation either in the economic (monetary) or environmental (biophysical) frame. The follow-up questions were based on each of the seven variables to measure awareness and decision-making as a result of seeing those messages. Each question was answered on a six-point scale. The teachers returned 206 student questionnaires (82 from one high school; 124 from the other) to the researchers; after removing incomplete surveys, 193 were included in the final analysis. The questionnaire responses were statistically analyzed to produce mean scores to reveal framing impact, in which a higher score indicated a more effective messaging tactic.

The results regarding environmental awareness showed perceived certainty, perceived danger, and perceived significance had a higher score among the economic group as opposed to the environmental group, whereas perceived tangibility yielded no score difference between the two groups. Regarding decision-making, the analysis showed willingness to participate had a higher score for the environmental group. Decision confidence and decision difficulty showed no significant score differences. The researchers concluded the economic frame was more effective for increasing environmental awareness in three of the four variables. This means economic-based messages were more effective in helping students to predict climate change issues, identify the damage of these issues, and interpret the impact of these issues. The environmental frame was more effective for willingness to participate, while the other two variables for decision-making had the same impact for both environmental and economic framing. Because of this, they concluded environmental-based messages were more effective in encouraging students to decide to act. Overall, the researchers demonstrated economic framing and monetary information can help educators achieve some environmental education goals, and help students connect the impact of social and economic decisions on the natural world.

There were limitations to this study. The researchers acknowledged they assumed information affects awareness, which is a fundamental generalization throughout the entire study and ultimately this assumption may not be true. The study focused on Korean high school students, so the results are not generalizable to all student populations, and there was not a control group, meaning the results were hard to compare. Finally, the three environmental messages contained different measures of cost (liters, kilometers, tons of carbon dioxide), whereas the three economic messages contained the same measure of cost (Korean won). This could have caused an added variation in the results as some students may not be as familiar with some biophysical measures.

The researchers suggested environmental educators use economic framing to teach complex environmental issues like climate change because it is more effective at creating awareness among students. However, since each individual brings different perspectives and experiences to the classroom, educators should consider using both economic and environmental framing to cater to the needs of students.