Audience segments in environmental and science communication: recent findings and future perspectives

Abstract

People differ. Not only do they vote for different parties, buy different products, have different hobbies and use different media. They also differ in their interest in, attitudes on, and behavior towards scientific and environmental issues. This has been shown for people’s general assessments of environmental issues (e.g. Eurobarometer, 2017) and of science and research (for an overview see Besley, 2013). It has also been demonstrated for people’s attitudes towards more specific topics such as global warming (for an overview see Nisbet & Myers, 2007), nuclear energy (e.g. Kristiansen, Bonfadelli, & Kovic, 2016), nanotechnology (e.g. Scheufele, Corley, Shih, Dalrymple, & Ho, 2009), or biotechnology (e.g. Bonfadelli, 2017). These differences are not randomly distributed across populations. Researchers from the social and behavioral sciences have identified the organizing logics that underlie this diversity, and identified factors which help explain the variation of people’s attitudes. They have shown, for example, that perceptual and behavioral differences with regards to scientific and environmental issues are related to people’s education, their age, gender, or socio-economic status, among other factors (see, e.g. Besley, 2013; Kawamoto, Nakayama, & Saijo, 2013; Nisbet & Myers, 2007; Research Councils UK, 2008).