The (non)effect of personalization in climate texts on the credibility of climate scientists: a case study on sustainable travel

Abstract

How we communicate about climate change affects how others think, feel, and act. Therefore, the way that climate scientists formulate messages is important. In this study, we assess the effect of personalization (operationalized as writing in a conversational style), as previously done by Ginns and Fraser (2010), and the perceived credibility of climate scientists. We exposed 100 participants aged between 18 and 35 to three versions of a text on the climate impact of train versus plane travel with varying degrees of personalization and assessed the outcome with respect to (1) their attitude (specifically interest and opinion) towards sustainable travel and (2) the perceived credibility of the climate scientist who wrote the text. Results show that there is a small effect on the degree of happiness after reading the different texts, but there are few other effects. Our main conclusion is that, although personalization may be well received by readers, it may not be the best mode to influence the attitudes of readers towards sustainable travel or to impact how readers come to perceive climate scientists' credibility.