Exposure to the Pope's Climate Change Message Activated Convinced Americans to Take Certain Activism Actions

Abstract

Many people who are concerned about the issue of climate change do not engage in the collective action behaviors that are most likely to lead to societal-scale solutions. Such attitude-behavior inconsistency is a well-documented phenomenon. This study investigates whether exposure to an effectively framed message from a highly credible source can increase the consistency between attitudes and activism behaviors among people with pre-existing strong attitudes, particularly for behaviors that are less difficult. The release of Pope Francis' climate change encyclical, Laudato Sí, and subsequent visit to the United States provide an opportunity to test this research question in a natural field setting. A nationally representative, within-subject panel survey was conducted two months prior to the release of the encyclical and again four months later, after the release and papal visit, to assess the impact of the Pope's message on Americans' climate change consumer and political advocacy behaviors. Among people who are already concerned about climate change, higher exposure to the Pope's climate change message is associated with increases in attitude-behavior consistency for less difficult activism behaviors. The findings suggest that sustained exposure to compelling climate messages from trusted sources can increase the performance of activism behaviors.