Demir Mehmet Özer, Gök Demir Zuhal, Karakaya Çiğdem, Erendağ Sümer Fulya
Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Antalya, Türkiye.
Faculty of Communication, Public Relations and Publicity Department, Antalya, Türkiye.
Heliyon. 2024 Jul 27;10(15):e35380. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e35380. eCollection 2024 Aug 15.
The effectiveness of government policies and environmental initiatives to mitigate global warming relies heavily on public support, which is closely tied to public perception and awareness. Despite the scientific evidence communicated, the public remains reluctant to take preventive measures against global warming. The aim of the paper is to investigate the communicative actions of publics proposed as in the situational theory of problem solving to understand publics' communicative actions towards global warming. The paper utilizes a fuzzy rule-based system approach to analyze the communicative actions of publics to reveal non-linear relationships; whereas previous studies mostly used linear statistical analysis. The paper provides a deeper understanding into the interplay between problem recognition, constraint recognition, and involvement in shaping information behavior. The results show that the communicative actions of the publics are at a low-to-moderate level. The paper's interesting finding is the nonlinear effects of constraint recognition on communicative action about global warming. Contrary to the current literature, it was found out that the dominant factor that may convince public to start taking action towards global warming seems to be recognizing being constrained at a moderate level. Based on the results, it is suggested for policy makers and communication strategists to mitigate the negative outcomes of global warming by integrating environmental issues into education at all levels and collaborating with non-governmental organizations for national awareness campaigns which focus on increasing public problem recognition and involvement.
政府减轻全球变暖的政策及环境倡议的成效在很大程度上依赖公众支持，而公众支持与公众认知和意识紧密相关。尽管已传达了科学证据，但公众仍不愿采取预防全球变暖的措施。本文旨在研究作为问题解决情境理论中所提出的公众的传播行为，以理解公众针对全球变暖的传播行为。本文采用基于模糊规则的系统方法来分析公众的传播行为，以揭示非线性关系；而此前的研究大多使用线性统计分析。本文对问题识别、限制因素识别以及参与塑造信息行为之间的相互作用提供了更深入的理解。结果表明，公众的传播行为处于低到中等水平。本文有趣的发现是限制因素识别对关于全球变暖的传播行为的非线性影响。与当前文献相反，研究发现可能说服公众开始采取应对全球变暖行动的主导因素似乎是认识到处于中等程度的受限状态。基于这些结果，建议政策制定者和传播策略师通过将环境问题纳入各级教育，并与非政府组织合作开展全国性宣传活动，以减轻全球变暖的负面后果，这些活动侧重于提高公众的问题识别和参与度。
