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Global Warming’s “Six Americas Short Survey”: Audience Segmentation of Climate Change Views Using a Four Question Instrument

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Chryst, B 
Marlon, J 
van der Linden, Sander  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0269-1744
Leiserowitz, A 
Maibach, E 

Abstract

Audience segmentation has long been used in marketing, public health, and communication, and is now becoming an important tool in the environmental domain as well. Global Warming's Six Americas is a well-established segmentation of Americans based on their climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. The original Six Americas model requires a 36 question-screener and although there is increasing interest in using these segments to guide education and outreach efforts, the number of survey items required is a deterrent. Using 14 national samples and machine learning algorithms, we identify a subset of four questions from the original 36, the Six Americas Short SurveY (SASSY), that accurately segment survey respondents into the Six Americas categories. The four items cover respondents' global warming risk perceptions, worry, expected harm to future generations, and personal importance of the issue. The true positive accuracy rate for the model ranges between and across the six segments on a 20 hold-out set. Similar results were achieved with four out-of-sample validation data sets. In addition, the screener showed test-retest reliability on an independent, two-wave sample. To facilitate further research and outreach, we provide a web-based application of the new short-screener.

Description

Keywords

Six Americas, global warming, segmentation

Journal Title

Environmental Communication

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1752-4032
1752-4040

Volume Title

12

Publisher

Informa UK Limited