‼️ New paper! 📄 We used an experimental survey to explore how describing land use change in terms of social conflict (or not) affects public opinion. Big sample, lots of stats, some useful findings. Here’s a summary of 2 key findings. (And paper is here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ee…) 
Environmental change & decision-making unfolds in a ‘culture of conflict’; groups vie to dominate discourses, influence others & secure their preferred policy outcome. This is particularly the case in the media, where journalistic norms emphasise conflict to generate interest.
A key input to environment and land use decision-making processes is measures of 👍📈‘public opinion’ and ‘social acceptability’ 👎📉; usually simplistic & quantitative, indicating the views of the citizenry as a proxy for the common good.
But is public opinion shaped by the culture of conflict? And if so, how, and what does this mean for how we understand the social dimension of environmental change? These are the questions we explored in this newly published study.
We took a bunch of hypothetical land use scenarios and described them in 3 experimental conditions framed using varying levels of conflict. In one of the conditions, we included the ‘usual suspects’ of environmental conflict.
We assessed whether the rates of support or opposition were different for the same land use scenario described in different levels of conflict. We analysed 🌳conservation, 🌽farming, 🐟fishing, and ⛰️mining.
(We also measured perception of intensity of conflict, identification with the “usual suspects” and political groups, decision-making style, and other standard demographic type variables.)
Our 📊key findings📊 are that 1⃣ conflict framing moderates public opinion, and 2⃣ support and opposition are closely related to the amount of conflict one perceives to be associated with a land use scenario.
1⃣ Conflict framing of land use scenarios leads to public opinion being less extreme compared to when the same land use scenarios are framed in more neutral terms.
This means that the way we present land use options and changes will affect public opinion, which in turn can drive policy responses, opening some options and closing others. Social conflict about the environment is real and important, and we need to grapple with it.
But, we also know there is a tendency for the 🗞️media to emphasise conflict in order to increase readership. So, we may be pushing public opinion in a particular direction due to journalistic norms that emphasise conflict as a part of making land use issues newsworthy.
This is particularly important when we break down the different types of land use scenarios. As a baseline, our research shows public opinion is 👍favourable toward 🌳conservation and 👎unfavourable toward ⛰️mining.
But public opinion about both 🌳conservation and ⛰️mining is made more moderate by conflict framing...
...When neutral, there is strong 👎opposition to ⛰️mining, but when conflict framed this becomes weaker 👎opposition. When neutral, there is strong 👍support for 🌳conservation, but when conflict framed this becomes weaker 👍support.
So, if it’s presented as harmonious, people generally support more 🌳conservation and oppose more ⛰️mining. When it’s conflict framed, the differences between the levels of support and opposition for 🌳conservation and ⛰️mining shrink substantially.
How do we generally see issues of ⛰️mining and 🌳conservation presented in the media? In terms of conflict. Hmm.
2⃣ Stronger 👍support for a land use scenario is associated with low levels of conflict perceived to be associated with the same scenario. Stronger 👎opposition to a land use scenario is associated with high levels of conflict perceived to be associated with it.
We have explained this result via the ‘false consensus effect’. This effect is where we overestimate the number of people who share our view.
So, those who would 👍support a land use think most other folks would too, meaning there would be low conflict associated with it. Meanwhile, 👎opponents expect many other opponents, so expect high conflict.
This is a really important finding, particularly if the perceptions held by decision-makers about public opinion are not ground-truthed to assess their accuracy. We need to always critically question our own views!
We also found interesting interactions between conflict framing, conflict perception, and support/opposition:
Most significantly was that conflict framing ⛰️mining, different to all other land use types, actually decreased the level of conflict perceived to be associated with the scenarios!
We hazarded an explanation for this, drawing on ideas of issue fatigue and cynicism. Still an open Q about what is going on there.
Finally, our study also offers some 📊descriptive insights into identity & public opinion on land use in Australia. These descriptives are presented in the supplementary information.
I think these findings are interesting – they help us to understand the complexity of public opinion, conflict, and the media as a vehicle for learning about environmental issues.
But, I also tried to make the stats easy to read in the hopes this might be a useful resource for others using a similar approach. Check out the methods in the main text + supplemental information for the full analytical methods and results.
The full article is available online via Environmental Policy and Governance, here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ee…. Thanks to co-authors Bradd Witt (@UQ_sees ), Justine Lacey (@CSIRO ) & Rod McCrea (@CSIRO). And thanks to you for reading!
