Assignent Solutionnurs

Climate change is the most critical environmental concern the world is currently facing. A challenging aspect of climate change is that solutions are difficult to implement due to obstacles from politicians and industry. Acting on climate change is important, given the consequences of not doing so (e.g., Hamilton, 2010). While the level of public support for action related to climate change is increasing, the level of concern expressed by the public is arguably not commensurate with the scope and severity of the problem.
Previous research on attitudes toward climate change has focussed on factors like individual differences (e.g., Yu & Yu, 2017), political ideology (e.g., Whitmarsh, 2011), and perceived risks of climate change. An important factor which has received less attention is the role that the source of a message plays in influencing the public’s trust in the message, and thus attitude change.
The perceived credibility and trust in the source of a persuasive message is argued to be important when it comes to attitude change (Hovland & Weiss, 1951; Pornpitakpan, 2004; Tormala, Briñol, & Petty, 2006). Research has demonstrated that the public is more likely to change their attitude if they feel that the source is trustworthy and credible (that is, they have sufficient expertise in the topic). However, there has been little research focused on understanding why a source is trusted. This is despite the acknowledged importance of the role of trust in shaping the publics’ views on issues such as climate change (Malka, et al., 2009).
This research report is designed to answer the question: Does perceived self-interest of a source (i.e., author) influence the public’s trust in their argument?