Remembering Our Green Selves: Exploring Climate Attitudes Through Identity and Memorable Messages

Environmental communication, or communication about environmental issues and affairs, is growing increasingly relevant to addressing the worsening climate crisis. As lived experiences with climate disasters become more common, individuals’ environmental efficacy and attitude change may prove much more personal than they are categorical or general. The present study aims to address the gap between sustainability messaging and audiences’ personal connections to the environment by testing whether memorable message recall impacts climate policy attitudes. In a survey experiment, participants (n=262) were asked to recall a memorable message relating to the environment before answering a series of questions regarding their climate policy opinions. Preliminary analyses suggest recalling an anti-environmental memorable message engenders greater levels of support for pro-environmental policy and supports the application of the Theory of Memorable Messages to environmental communication.