This research project received funding through the 2024-2025 Institute for Diversity Science Seed Grant Program
Principal Investigator: Markus Brauer, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Co-Investigator: Benjamin Douglas, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Abstract: Climate change presents an existential threat to us all, but the harm it causes will not be experienced equally. In fact, climate change will manifest as a form of environmental racism, harming minoritized communities and communities of color most directly. Communicating about environmental racism without eliciting backlash is a critical issue for both climate change research and diversity science. However, when a similar pattern emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, communicating about racial disparities decreased support for solutions to the pandemic among White Americans. Mitigating the effects of climate change will require a broad coalition of support. How, then, can we accurately communicate about environmental racism without losing support among those individuals less likely to bear the brunt of climate change? One solution is social norms. By leveraging people’s desire to match their behavior with that of their peers, we hypothesize that so-called “social norms messages” can reduce the backlash effects which occur when communicating about environmental racism. We propose three studies to (1) identify which groups of people are most likely to decrease their support for pro-environmental policies after framing those policies in the context of environmental racism, (2)examine individuals’ self-reported behavior and perception of social norms in response to messages favoring antiracist environmental policies, and (3) assess how social norms messages affect civic engagement efforts that combat environmental racism.