Global Warming's Six Americas
Nov 1, 2016 Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
One of the first rules of effective communication is to “know thy audience.” Climate change public engagement efforts must start with the fundamental recognition that people are different and have different psychological, cultural, and political reasons for acting – or not acting – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our research has identified “Global Warming’s Six Americas”: six unique audiences within the American public that each responds to the issue in their own distinct way.
Artwork by Michael Sloan
The Alarmed are fully convinced of the reality and seriousness of climate change and are already taking individual, consumer, and political action to address it. The Concerned are also convinced that global warming is happening and a serious problem, but have not yet engaged the issue personally.
Three other Americas – the Cautious, the Disengaged, and the Doubtful – represent different stages of understanding and acceptance of the problem, and none are actively involved. The final America – the Dismissive are very sure it is not happening and are actively involved as opponents of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The six audiences were first identified using a large nationally representative survey of American adults conducted in the fall of 2008. The survey questionnaire included extensive, in-depth measures of the public’s climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, motivations, values, policy preferences, behaviors, and underlying barriers to action. The Six Americas are distinguishable on all these dimensions, and display very different levels of engagement with the issue.
Since 2008, we have conducted many additional studies on these six audiences, including:
Artwork by Michael Sloan
The Alarmed are fully convinced of the reality and seriousness of climate change and are already taking individual, consumer, and political action to address it. The Concerned are also convinced that global warming is happening and a serious problem, but have not yet engaged the issue personally.
Three other Americas – the Cautious, the Disengaged, and the Doubtful – represent different stages of understanding and acceptance of the problem, and none are actively involved. The final America – the Dismissive are very sure it is not happening and are actively involved as opponents of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The six audiences were first identified using a large nationally representative survey of American adults conducted in the fall of 2008. The survey questionnaire included extensive, in-depth measures of the public’s climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, motivations, values, policy preferences, behaviors, and underlying barriers to action. The Six Americas are distinguishable on all these dimensions, and display very different levels of engagement with the issue.
Since 2008, we have conducted many additional studies on these six audiences, including:
- Global Warming’s Six Americas, 2009 (the original study)
- Faith, Morality and the Environment: Portraits of Global Warming’s Six Americas
- Perception of the Health Consequences of Global Warming
- Climate Stability As Understood by Global Warming’s Six Americas
- Americans’ Actions to Limit Global Warming
- Knowledge of Climate Change Across Global Warming’s Six Americas
- Message Strategies for Global Warming’s Six Americas
- Screening tools: Survey instruments; instructions for coding and data treatment; and statistical program scripts
- Identifying like-minded audiences for climate change public engagement campaigns: An audience segmentation analysis and tool development
- Global Warming’s Six Americas and the Election, 2016
