Audience segmentation and climate change communication: conceptual and methodological considerations
Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2014 papers
Abstract
Engaging the public about mitigating or adapting to climate change threats poses significant challenges for scientists, policy makers, and others responsible for developing communication strategies. In response to these challenges, interest is growing in audience segmentation as a possible strategy to develop more effective communications that are tailored and targeted to subgroups of the public who share similar values, beliefs, behaviors, and/or policy preferences about climate change. In this article, we provide a brief historical overview of audience segmentation and its applications to marketing, health, politics, and most recently climate change. We then critically evaluate several conceptual arguments about whether segmentation is an appropriate strategy for climate change communications, review key methodological considerations associated with conducting segmentation analyses, and make several recommendations about best practice. We conclude that, in principle, audience segmentation and targeted messaging are potentially valuable tools for enhancing climate change communication. But, in practice, there are conceptual and methodological complexities of which practitioners and consumers should be aware when conducting and interpreting the results of segmentation studies. In addition, more research is required, particularly related to tailoring and targeting messages to identified segments, before these strategies can be considered to have a sufficient evidence base to warrant widespread adoption. This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change
Related Papers
- → The construction of explicit warrant derived from implicit warrant in mathematical proof(2020)3 cited
- Development path of the stock warrant market in China(2007)
- Review on the Theoretical Research of Warrants(2009)
- → Epistemic Warrant: A First Approximation(2013)
- 논증 교육에서 전제의 재개념화 및 백워드 설계 기반 ‘전제 탐구’ 단원 개발(2019)