Short and long-term dominance of negative information in shaping public energy perceptions: The case of shallow geothermal systems

Spampatti, Tobia; Hahnel, Ulf J.J.; Trutnevyte, Evelina; Brosch, Tobias

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113070

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Increasing subjective knowledge about the sector was revealed as potentially acceptance-hindering, given the importance of emotions for beliefs and behaviors (Spampatti et al 2022), although its significant influence was limited to negative components and did not notably correlate with lower acceptability. Subjective knowledge as a critical lens on system changes was found by Linzenich et al (2020) regarding large-scale energy infrastructure technologies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Energy system changes in the agricultural sector: testing a value-congruent communication approach to foster positive attitudes

Olvermann,

Kauffeld

2024

Environ. Res. Commun.

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Multiple sectors, including agriculture, are subject to decarbonization and wide-ranging system changes. With a growing distance between agriculture and the public, communicating changes and fostering public acceptance as crucial factors for the success of these changes has become challenging. Therefore, understanding public attitudes towards emerging system changes in unfamiliar sectors helps identify appropriate communication strategies and provides information about possible responses from different stakeholders. To address the scarcity of studies on system changes in agriculture and their acceptability, a multidimensional evaluation of attitudes was undertaken using a factorial survey to test the utility of value-congruent information for enhancing positive attitudes. Electrical field cultivation (EFC) served as a case example for one potential energy system change in agriculture. The data were collected via an open scientific survey panel in Germany (N = 300) using a written vignette in the form of a newspaper article; different benefit foci and hypotheses were tested using path analysis. Although the different benefit foci did not reveal significant differences, problem awareness and knowledge were found to predict positive attitudes toward EFC. For once, results highlight the need to foster overall problem awareness for fossil fuels to garner public support for various pathways. Additionally, results underscore the perceived lack of personal affectedness by transition pathways as a barrier to responding to communication strategies, specifically in unfamiliar sectors such as agriculture. The study outlines the need for stakeholders to design communication strategies under consideration of fostering personal affectedness and overall problem understanding.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Energy system changes in the agricultural sector: testing a value-congruent communication approach to foster positive attitudes

Olvermann,

Kauffeld

2024

Environ. Res. Commun.

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“…Platforms have provided similar contextual information about companies in other settings—for example, Google Flights displays carbon emissions data alongside flight prices when people select a flight to purchase among several options 52 . Enabling consumers to view such information at the point of purchase could provide a stronger incentive for companies to steer their advertisements away from such outlets, especially since the effect of negative information can persist for several months 53 . Overall, these interventions could decrease the inadvertent advertising revenue going towards misinformation outlets, which could eventually lead to such sites ceasing to operate, as observed anecdotally in prior work 29 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Companies inadvertently fund online misinformation despite consumer backlash

Ahmad,

Sen,

Eesley

et al. 2024

Nature

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The financial motivation to earn advertising revenue has been widely conjectured to be pivotal for the production of online misinformation1–4. Research aimed at mitigating misinformation has so far focused on interventions at the user level5–8, with little emphasis on how the supply of misinformation can itself be countered. Here we show how online misinformation is largely financed by advertising, examine how financing misinformation affects the companies involved, and outline interventions for reducing the financing of misinformation. First, we find that advertising on websites that publish misinformation is pervasive for companies across several industries and is amplified by digital advertising platforms that algorithmically distribute advertising across the web. Using an information-provision experiment9, we find that companies that advertise on websites that publish misinformation can face substantial backlash from their consumers. To examine why misinformation continues to be monetized despite the potential backlash for the advertisers involved, we survey decision-makers at companies. We find that most decision-makers are unaware that their companies’ advertising appears on misinformation websites but have a strong preference to avoid doing so. Moreover, those who are unaware and uncertain about their company’s role in financing misinformation increase their demand for a platform-based solution to reduce monetizing misinformation when informed about how platforms amplify advertising placement on misinformation websites. We identify low-cost, scalable information-based interventions to reduce the financial incentive to misinform and counter the supply of misinformation online.

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“…From a final pool of N = 1,033 tweets identified as climate related and disinformation/delay, we identified N = 79 tweets that were understandable without requiring background information and not including country-specific aspects. These 79 tweets were pretested with a representative sample of N = 504 British participants on the data collection platform Prolific ( https://www.prolific.co/ ), in terms of their impact on affect towards climate action and 12 further variables—for example, perceived political slant—that may affect processing of disinformation about political topics 203 (the full list of disinformation, with a description of the pretesting design and all validation materials and data, can be found at https://osf.io/m58zx ). Among these 79 statements, we selected N = 20 disinformation statements (Table 3 ) that deviated the least from the mean ratings across all 15 validation measures, evenly divided between 10 disinformation statements about climate science and 10 disinformation statements to delay climate action (according to coding criteria developed in previous research 14 , 33 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries

Spampatti,

Hahnel,

Trutnevyte

et al. 2023

Nat Hum Behav

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Decades after the scientific debate about the anthropogenic causes of climate change was settled, climate disinformation still challenges the scientific evidence in public discourse. Here we present a comprehensive theoretical framework of (anti)science belief formation and updating to account for the psychological factors that influence the acceptance or rejection of scientific messages. We experimentally investigated, across 12 countries (N = 6,816), the effectiveness of six inoculation strategies targeting these factors—scientific consensus, trust in scientists, transparent communication, moralization of climate action, accuracy and positive emotions—to fight real-world disinformation about climate science and mitigation actions. While exposure to disinformation had strong detrimental effects on participants’ climate change beliefs (δ = −0.16), affect towards climate mitigation action (δ = −0.33), ability to detect disinformation (δ = −0.14) and pro-environmental behaviour (δ = −0.24), we found almost no evidence for protective effects of the inoculations (all δ < 0.20). We discuss the implications of these findings and propose ways forward to fight climate disinformation.

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Short and long-term dominance of negative information in shaping public energy perceptions: The case of shallow geothermal systems

Cited by 12 publications

References 73 publications

Energy system changes in the agricultural sector: testing a value-congruent communication approach to foster positive attitudes

Energy system changes in the agricultural sector: testing a value-congruent communication approach to foster positive attitudes

Companies inadvertently fund online misinformation despite consumer backlash

Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries

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