The experience of environmental stress and attitudes towards climate change was explored for 1226 students at the University of the South Pacific, the foremost tertiary institution serving the independent nations of the Pacific. Students sourced information regarding climate change from media including television, radio, and newspapers; the community (typically via their village, church, and extended family); the University and their friends; and in addition to regional agencies such as the Pacific Community. Most students concluded that they could not believe all of the informations provided by these sources. The findings demonstrate that most students-the future elite of the region-rank global environmental change as the highest future risk. Although nearly all respondents believed that climate change was happening, more than half of respondents believed that the risk was exaggerated and only one-third believed that science would find an answer, suggesting a lack of trust in scientific sources of information. Results also showed that these attitudes varied across demographic factors such as age, region, and gender. The understanding of contemporary attitudes towards global environmental change among a cohort that is likely to include future national leaders in the Pacific Islands region presents unique opportunities for long-range planning of intervention and support strategies. Of particular note for effective intervention and support is the breadth and trustworthiness of various information sources including Pacific Island leaders.

This PhD project aims to extend climate change adaptation research by understanding the physical exposure of a place and the perceptions of the people occupying that space. There is scientific consensus that climate change will amplify existing environmental risks and have unequal impacts on human societies worldwide. The people living in small island developing states (SIDS) are at the frontline of the impacts of climate change due to high levels of exposure and low adaptive capacity. Using data from recent fieldwork, this study assesses the exposure and perceptions of people living in Labasa (a coastal-deltaic rural-urban area developed on a flood plain) in northern Fiji in the South Pacific. Even though risks associated with future sea level rise (SLR) are generally recognised for coastal areas, risks specific to certain landforms, such as river deltas, are understudied. This study provides an assessment of future risks from global SLR and storm surges under SLR in the Labasa Delta. The inundation maps produced through the risk assessment show that both the natural (vegetation and hydrological network) and the built (roads, communities, and infrastructure) environments in the river delta are at inundation risk from future SLR. Despite growing behavioural and attitudinal data on climate change in developed countries, little is known about the determinants of climate behaviours in developing countries. The second main aim of the current study is to provide the first set of representative psychological and behavioural data for the Pacific Islands region with tested hypothesised relationships. To this end, a survey of climate change perceptions amongst a national representative Fijian sample (N = 420), derived through random sampling was conducted throughout the study area. The survey collected both demographic (age, gender, education, employment, and land tenure) and psychological (knowledge, information, risk perception, self-efficacy) data, and investigated the relationship between these variables and climate change adaptation behavioural intentions. As hypothesised, multiple regression analyses identified affective associations, psychological proximity, flood experience, risk perceptions, and self-efficacy as determinants of pro-climate behaviours in Fiji. The results also found a greater engagement with climate change amongst racial majorities (iTaukei), males, and educated people. The findings did not support the hypothesis that increasing objective knowledge, belief, and trust in information sources determines climate behaviours. Although relationships existed between objective knowledge, belief, trust, and the behavioural intention variables, these came out as non-significant predictors. Overall, these results contribute to global research on climate change adaptation. By examining two important aspects - the likely inundation in the Labasa delta because of sea level rise and the perceptions of people in the Labasa area of climate change, the project fills a significant recognised research gap on islands. Previous climate change studies on islands have neither focused on local impacts in peripheral locations, nor looked at people's perceptions in such vulnerable places. The results of this research project provide a baseline of perceptions and vulnerabilities for islands that can aid in the design of future adaptation and risk communication strategies for vulnerable communities in Fiji and the wider Asia-Pacific region. It is expected that the results will offer stakeholders evidence-based advice and important insights on how to make climate change adaptation efforts more sustainable and community-inclusive than current practice.

In this study we employed the Extended Parallel Process Model of risk communication to investigate the effectiveness of combining threat and efficacy messages to increase public engagement with climate change. A total of 515 Mandarin-speaking residents of Beijing, China were randomly assigned to view one of two climate change messages sourced from an online environmental website. The first message (high threat - low efficacy) described the negative impacts of climate change for China, but provided no information about what actions could be taken by citizens to reduce the threat. The second message (high threat - high efficacy) provided the same threat information, but also provided practical information on how to reduce the threat. Mediation analyses revealed that the high threat - high efficacy message elicited higher levels of perceived efficacy in viewers, which in turn predicted higher levels of danger control processing (intention to seek our more information and take action) and lower levels of fear control processing (message rejection and denial of threat). Moderation analyses revealed that the high efficacy messages were less effective for viewers with moderate to strong anthropocentric worldviews and very high ecocentric worldviews.

People vary considerably in terms of their knowledge, beliefs, and concern about climate change. Thus, an important challenge for climate change communicators is how to most effectively engage different types of audiences. This study aimed to identify distinct audience segments that vary in terms of their values, beliefs, and responses to climate change and determine for each segment which specific message attributes increased motivation to engage in climate adaptation. A sample of 1031 Australian residents (aged 18-66 years) completed an online survey assessing their values, beliefs, and behaviors related to climate change, and recording their responses to a broad range of climate change adaptation messages. Latent profile analysis identified three distinct audience segments: alarmed (34.4%), uncommitted (45.2%), and dismissive (20.3%). Sixty climate change adaptation messages were coded in terms of the presence/absence of six attributes: explicit reference to climate change, providing specific adaptation advice, strong negative emotive content, emphasis on collective responsibility, highlighting local impacts, and underscoring financial impacts. Participants viewed a random sample of six messages and rated the extent to which each message motivated them to seek out more information and immediately respond to the climate change threat portrayed in the message. Multilevel modeling indicated messages that included strong negative emotive content or provided specific adaptation advice increased adaptation intentions in all three audience segments. Omitting any mention of climate change and emphasizing local impacts increased adaptation intentions in dismissive audiences. Implications for tailoring and targeting climate change adaptation messages are discussed.

Engaging the public about mitigating or adapting to climate change threats poses significant challenges for scientists, policy makers, and others responsible for developing communication strategies. In response to these challenges, interest is growing in audience segmentation as a possible strategy to develop more effective communications that are tailored and targeted to subgroups of the public who share similar values, beliefs, behaviors, and/or policy preferences about climate change. In this article, we provide a brief historical overview of audience segmentation and its applications to marketing, health, politics, and most recently climate change. We then critically evaluate several conceptual arguments about whether segmentation is an appropriate strategy for climate change communications, review key methodological considerations associated with conducting segmentation analyses, and make several recommendations about best practice. We conclude that, in principle, audience segmentation and targeted messaging are potentially valuable tools for enhancing climate change communication. But, in practice, there are conceptual and methodological complexities of which practitioners and consumers should be aware when conducting and interpreting the results of segmentation studies. In addition, more research is required, particularly related to tailoring and targeting messages to identified segments, before these strategies can be considered to have a sufficient evidence base to warrant widespread adoption.