Can an environmentally biased speech change our perception regarding environmental issues? A randomized experiment for Brazil

Abstract

One of the problems that can affect the value that individuals attribute to the environment is related to the quality and level of information that agents have about the environmental resource. The purpose of this article is to test the hypothesis that persuasive communication affects individuals' perceptions of the environment. To test the hypothesis, we applied randomized questionnaires to students at the Federal University of Pelotas. The results of the random experiment show that groups formed by young, inexperienced and uninformed are more influenced by environmental rhetoric. Furthermore, the results show that individual perception can be intentionally altered by biased information.

Keywords

• persuasive communication
• information bias
• environmental perception
• randomized experiment