From Awareness to Action: Taking into Consideration the Role of Emotions and Cognition for a Stage Toward a Better Communication of Climate Change
Résumé
The general public expects relevant, comprehensible and acceptable communication on climate change. Many efforts have been, and are still, being made to make the message clear and comprehensible. This paper focuses on the acceptability of the message by the receiver, to move from awareness of climate change to concrete action, which is seldom discussed in the literature. In order to make a climate change communication assessment, we choose to take as reference the Prochaska’s behavioural stage of change model. Our analysis suggests that taking into account emotions and cognition mechanisms is needed in order to accompany people to better process the information and integrate it to move toward action. This paper highlights different commonly used communication practices and the underlying brain mechanisms involved in each one. A better understanding of those mechanisms should help to improve the message’s receivability in communication about climate change. In turn, it will help to move from individuals knowledge into concrete action. By this way, we hope to provide inspiration to communicators in order to better accompany people in their process from awareness to action.