Data from: Applying fear appeal to explain message framing in climate change communication: When are loss frames more effective?

This study investigated how goal frames (gain, non-loss, loss) either with or without efficacy statements affect climate change policy support. Addressing the framing literature’s difficulty establishing a guiding theory with consistent findings, we (1) propose fear appeal theory as an alternative framework to guide goal-framing research; (2) test five fear appeal variables (fear, perceived threat, hope, perceived efficacy, and message processing) as mediators of goal-framing effects on policy support; and (3) highlight four common goal-framing confounds that may partly underlie the literature’s inconsistent findings. Aligning with fear appeal theory, results from a carefully controlled experiment (N = 900) revealed that a more threatening loss frame paired with an efficacy statement produced stronger pro-policy attitudes and greater willingness-to-pay by successfully balancing fear/threat with hope/efficacy and by producing deeper message processing.本研究探讨了目标框架（goal frames，涵盖收益型、非损失型、损失型）在搭配或不搭配效能陈述（efficacy statements）的情境下，对气候变化政策支持度的影响。针对现有框架研究难以建立可产出一致结论的指导理论这一局限，本研究：(1) 提出恐惧诉求理论（fear appeal theory）作为指导目标框架研究的替代性分析框架；(2) 检验五类恐惧诉求变量——恐惧感知、感知威胁、希望、感知效能与信息加工过程——作为目标框架对政策支持影响的中介变量（mediators）；(3) 点明四类常见的目标框架混淆变量（confounds），这些因素或可部分解释现有研究结论不一致的成因。契合恐惧诉求理论的预期，一项严格控制变量的实验（N=900）结果显示：将更具威胁性的损失框架与效能陈述相结合，可通过有效平衡恐惧/威胁与希望/效能，并促进更深入的信息加工过程，从而催生更强的亲政策态度与更高的支付意愿（willingness-to-pay）。