How economic perceptions shape environmental attitudes

features as temporal distance expands, whereas in the present or near future people are likelier to perceive concrete, incidental details (Trope & Liberman, 2003). An additional issue to consider is how accurately public perception of the economy reflects real economic conditions, and how strongly the public values the economy during different economic periods. Economic recessions have been found to increase public attention on economic matters (Headrick & Lanoue, 1991), as well as the importance of economic values (Singer, 2010). Economic recoveries unfold another complication for economic perception. During recessions, there seems to be a general agreement within society on the perception of bad economic conditions, whereas economic evaluations are divided by partisan and ideological lines during recoveries. People who do not support or adhere to the ideologies of the acting governing parties tend to perceive economic conditions as being worse than those who do support or adhere to the acting parties’ ideologies (Stanig, 2013). A final notable point is the complication in interpreting ‘good’ or ‘bad’ economic conditions while studying the effects of economic conditions on public opinion. While overall conditions may essentially seem like good measurement indicators, research has shown that people are somewhat more sensitive to changes in economic indicators – such as inflation, unemployment rate, and GDP – than the absolute ratings/values themselves (Headrick & Lanoue, 1991; Hester & Gibson, 2003; MacKuen et al., 1992). As an example, people may consider a 2% decrease in inflation from the previous month a sign that the economy is in good shape, irrelevant of whether the inflation is actually 10% or 20%. Research relying solely on absolute economic indicator ratings, or solely on changes in these ratings, may lead to inaccurate results. There are benefits to using public economic perception as a basis for investigating the relationship between economic conditions and public attitudes on environmental issues. These benefits arise from several factors: the combined effects of primarily negative media coverage 17 on environmental conditions and the reliance on media for estimating future economic conditions; the varying levels of attention and importance placed on economic values between recessions and recoveries; and the different evaluations of economic conditions stemming from differing political ideologies. Overall, this investigation intends to provide a different insight into the relationship between economic factors and public attitudes towards environmentally related issues, as opposed to simply employing real economic conditions as a basis for examination. 2.4 Framing, Priming and the Media Individuals hold certain cognitive structures that represent personal knowledge and stored ideas/beliefs related to specific objects (Entman, 1992; Shen, 2004). These cognitive structures, or ‘schemas,’ are the basis from which information processing at the individual level takes place (Entman, 1993). Information, events, or messages interact with certain schemas through which the information is interpreted. This interpretation also affects attitudes and opinions towards the information objects (Shen, 2004). As these schemas are constructed at the individual level, the same information may yield different effects on attitudes between individuals as it is processed through the differently constructed individual schemas. Framing, as the term is most commonly understood in political science, is a process in which people develop a particular conceptualization of an issue (Chong & Druckman, 2007) in the form of a particular problem definition, causal interpretation or moral evaluation (Entman, 1993). While psychologists utilize the term ‘individual schemas,’ this concept may be more commonly understood as ‘frame in thought’ within political and media research (Chong & Druckman, 2007; Scheufele, 1999). It is important to distinguish this term from ‘frames in communication,’ in which messages or information is exposed to an individual by a communicator, such as the media (Chong & Druckman, 2007; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, 1994). By selecting certain pieces of perceived reality, the ‘frame in communication’ thus works with and influences the ‘frame in thought’ (Entman, 1993). This conceptual understanding of framing differs somewhat from another common approach to framing that originates in psychology (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007), where framing effects, such as subtle wording alterations, account for observed differences in public choices (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). There are a few ways in which issue framing in communication may affect public attitudes. The first, and perhaps most recognized, is persuading the audience of a certain reality, or of a belief on the causality between an attitude object/issue and an attitude element 18 (Nelson & Oxley, 1999; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). This would be the case, for example, if a message effectively persuaded the audience that an oil-drilling project would have positive economic consequences, which again can influence attitudes changes towards the project. Another way in which issue framing may affect attitudes is by altering or influencing the importance that an audience attaches to particular attitude elements (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Nelson, Clawson, & Oxley, 1997; Nelson & Oxley, 1999). An example of such framing effects would be if a message effectively influenced people to place greater importance on environmental factors than economic factors when evaluating the desirability of an oil-drilling project. There are reasons to believe that framing effects of this nature may be stronger than that of the persuasion framing effects (Nelson & Oxley, 1999). A message has a stronger probability to induce framing effects when it interacts with pre-existing schemas and beliefs of an individual (Entman, 1993; Shen, 2004), even if the message content is highly biased or even inaccurate (Teel, Bright, Manfredo, & Brooks, 2006). Therefore, it may be more effective to get individuals to think within specific, existing cognitive elements when evaluating an issue, rather than trying to alter their already reasonably constructed beliefs. Consider, for example, trying to persuade someone to agree to an oil-drilling project when they already believe that the economic consequences would be positive and environmental consequences negative. The chances of getting an agreement for the project is greater if the messenger tries to focus the receiver’s attention on the economic factors of the project, rather than trying to change the receiver’s perception of environmental consequences. While Nelson, Oxley, and Clawson (1997; 1999) believe that the framing occurs mostly through an increase in importance of specific attitude elements following message exposure, the priming theory asserts that framing effects can transpire merely through increased element accessibility in thought (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Krosnick & Kinder, 1990; Scheufele, 2000). Faced with a judgment or choice, instead of carefully examining and weighing all plausible considerations, people usually employ simple intuitive shortcuts (or heuristics, see Chaiken, 1987), one of which is to rely upon information that is most accessible in memory or spontaneously comes to mind at a given time (Krosnick & Kinder, 1990). While message exposure can act as a mediator for increased attitude importance, it can also simply affect attitudes in itself with increased accessibility. The main gateway for message exposure and political communication to audiences is through mass media, which therefore has the capacity to considerably shape public attitudes on various issues, whether a deliberate strategy or not. Termed as ‘agenda setting,’ the media 19 emphasis on certain issues can shape the importance attached to these issues by the media audiences (McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007), and can be viewed as the media approach of issue importance framing. Priming has been defined, especially in relation to the media, as a process in which media influences its audience to use specific, tailored issues in their political evaluations (in reference to candidates, elected officials or parties) (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Priming in this context is not equivalent to, but rooted in, the accessibility increase premises of priming theory, as frequent media exposure can lead to increased accessibility in thought. Existing practice in framing research has been rather focused on ‘deliberate framing,’ but less focus has been given to the incidental ways in which framing can affect attitudes. In this research, deliberate framing means that an established relationship is hinted between an element and an attitude object. Irrelevant of the exact nature of that framing, whether it is by persuasion, affecting importance, or priming certain elements or issues over others, a link is established between an element and an attitude object, suggesting a pathway to which the individual’s cognitive processing should align. For example, measuring differences in public support for an oil-drilling project when framing the consequences as either good for the economy or bad for the environment, rational as it may sound, does still imply a specific effect – positive for the economy, negative for the environment. Two potential complications emerge in this example. First, the mere exposure to a frame claiming either positive or negative effects from a project may alter public opinion on that project just by presenting it in a positive or a negative way. Second, there is an unaccounted possibility that framing, by simply priming the economy or the environment, can incidentally arouse emotions and influence thoughts related to those fields, thus making them more accessible in memory before even making the connection to oil-drilling. This could affect