ABSTRACT

Recent studies have found mixed evidence about the role of psychological distance of climate change in people’s engagement with the issue. To gain more clarity in the application of construal level theory of psychological distance in climate change communication, we used two online experiments to investigate how abstract and concrete construals of climate change imagery may differentially influence people’s perceived psychological distances to the issue. Specifically, we clarified the conceptual differences between two subdimensions (i.e. egocentric and nonegocentric) of psychological distance and showed how the two types differ in climate change communication. Findings also showed that concrete construals of climate change images made participants estimate less egocentric geographical, temporal, and social distances to climate change, which led to greater mitigation behavioral intentions. But this construal-level effect did not exist when participants estimated the nonegocentric distances – the perceived distances between climate change and others (i.e. other locations, other people).

摘要

最近的研究发现了关于气候变化的心理距离在人们参与该问题中的作用的混合证据。为了更清楚地了解心理距离解释水平理论在气候变化传播中的应用，我们使用了两个在线实验来研究气候变化图像的抽象和具体解释如何不同地影响人们对问题的感知心理距离。具体来说，我们阐明了心理距离的两个子维度（即以自我为中心和非以自我为中心）之间的概念差异，并展示了这两种类型在气候变化沟通方面的差异。研究结果还表明，气候变化图像的具体解释使参与者估计不那么以自我为中心与气候变化的地理、时间和社会距离，这导致了更大的缓解行为意图。但是，当参与者估计非自我中心距离——气候变化与其他人（即其他地点、其他人）之间的感知距离时，这种解释层面的影响并不存在。