Enhancing climate change communication: strategies for profiling and targeting Australian interpretive communities

Abstract

This research aimed to provide practical information about how to design communications on climate change adaptation and target these to the Australian population. This was achieved by: (1) identifying and increasing awareness of different climate change audiences in Australia, and (2) evaluating how each audience responds to different types of climate change messages. ... Providing specific adaptation advice in messages was found to be effective for all communities. The results largely support the Extended Parallel Processing Model of risk communication (Witte, 1992), and suggest that message attributes should be adjusted to effectively communicate with different climate change interpretive communities within Australia.