Senior Research Fellow Dr Angela Dean

Professor Kerrie Wilson (QUTs institute for Future Environments)

Dr Robyn Gulliver (UQ)

Published paper: “Taking action for the Reef?” – Australians do not connect Reef conservation with individual climate-related actions

Journal: Conservation Letters: a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology

The research team asked survey participants the question “what types of actions could people like you do that would be helpful for the GBR?”

“Just 4 per cent mentioned a climate action and 12.3 per cent wanted to help but couldn’t think of anything they could do on a personal level,” said Professor Wilson.

As for what we call public-sphere actions, many more respondents suggested policies such as banning sunscreens or stopping commercial fishing, rather than any climate-related civic action such as lobbying governments or donating to charities working on reducing emissions.”

Some people might choose to focus on actions at home, reducing electricity use or changing to renewable energy sources,” Dr Dean said.

But perhaps more important is sharing our support for protecting the Reef and encouraging Governments step up to show leadership and action on climate change.”

Highlights

• As such, reef conservation initiatives must explicitly promote actions—in the home and in society—that reduce emissions and support the transition to a low carbon society
• the increasing frequency and severity of bleaching events means that anthropogenic climate change is now considered the most significant threat to the GBR
• Public Sphere and Private Sphere Actions must be taken
• Diverse factors influence adoption of climate related actions: psychological factors, Contextual Factors, Personal capacity to perform the actions, habits
  • communicating positive actions of others can strengthen positive social norms and promote behaviour change
  • positive behavioral spillover, from the public perseption of plastic
• This highlights a major opportunity for national campaigns about protecting the GBR to clearly communicate the importance of adopting specific private and public‐sphere behaviours that contribute to emissions reduction.
• Any such initiative needs to be informed by behavioral science, which recognizes that issue awareness is not sufficient for change, and that behavior change campaigns must target specific drivers of (or barriers to) performing target behaviors
• It is recognized that reducing emissions in the private‐sphere will be insufficient to reach climate targets; this highlights the need for a strong focus on public‐sphere actions.
• Consistent with such research, our respondents mentioning climate change or climate actions were less likely to support major conservative political parties.
  • Research suggests that climate communication with conservatives can be enhanced by using trusted “in group” messengers, communicating agreement between scientists, or framing communication to align with audience values such as technological advancement