The Emotional Substrates of Environmental Preferences

尽管气候变化对全球公众的影响越来越大，但对这一问题的普遍态度和政治方法仍然高度两极分化。随着研究人员开始认识到这一话语越来越多地被情感框定，我们现有理解中的一个空白出现了：情感在环境偏好的形成中扮演什么角色？一系列广泛的政治科学研究已经证明了情感在塑造个人政治参与和态度方面的力量，建立在情感智力理论的基础上，该理论强调了恐惧，愤怒和热情三个维度中的离散情感在态度形成和变化中的作用。在环境政治学中，类似的研究探索了各种离散的情绪与个人对全球变暖的态度之间的关系，但将其重点限制在个人对情绪刺激的反应上。因此，一直未能探索气候行为者使用情绪的方式以及他们在大众层面上运作的方式。鉴于上述情况，本博士研究旨在通过回答以下中心研究问题来提高对情绪对环境态度影响的认识：在气候治理的政策领域a）政府和社会运动如何操作情感B）情绪如何动员人们参与环保运动，以及情绪如何影响大众的环保态度？围绕这个问题设计的研究框架将开始，第一年制定详细的研究框架和广泛的文献综述，第二年专门收集。收集的数据将在第三年用于实现两个目标：第一，建立情绪对大众公众在环境问题上的影响，使用实验室实验来调查英国和美国与环境相关的情绪刺激对政治行为和态度的影响。本文将在现有研究的基础上，试图区分和探索愤怒、热情和焦虑的情绪维度对环境态度如何形成及其变化的离散影响。鉴于新环境发展产生新研究领域的可能性，也应该认识到进行自然实验的潜力，第二，探索行为者在气候治理运作中使用情绪的方式，研究行为者在气候治理背景下使用情绪力量的情况，超越孤立的，个人的和以接受为中心的分析，这是当前环境情感研究的特征。这将通过定量的情感话语分析的环境演讲和政策宣言，从政府精英和活动家团体，一个新兴的方法，本文首次使用在环境政治。本文将区分AIT的各个情感维度，并探讨其在气候话语中的相对地位，结合这两个研究目标，旨在揭示气候行动者所掌握的情感话语权的本质及其对公众的影响，从而更好地理解情感在气候治理中的作用。在推进对态度变形和气候传播的理解方面，这项研究可能有助于建立气候政策的进步霸权和保护我们的自然世界。更一般地说，本论文将进一步理解民主健康，帮助我们理解政治话语中的情绪对民众民主参与和理解的影响。

Despite the growing global public significance of climate change, popular attitudes and politicalapproaches to the issue remain highly polarised. As researchers begin to recognise that this discourse isincreasingly framed emotively, a lacuna in our existing understandings emerges; what role do emotionsplay in the formation of environmental preferences?A broad array of political science research has demonstrated the power of emotions in shapingindividual political participation and attitudes, built around Affective Intelligence Theory, whichhighlights the role that discrete emotions within the three dimensions of fear, anger and enthusiasmplay in attitude formation and change. In environmental politics, similar research exploring therelationship between a variety of discrete emotions and individual attitudes toward global warming, buthas restricted its focus to the responses of individuals to emotional stimuli. Thus, there has been afailure to explore the way in which climate actors employ emotions and the way they operate on a masslevel.In the light of the above, this PhD research will aim at advancing knowledge on the impact of emotionson environmental attitudes by answering the central research question of: in the policy area of climategovernance a) how do governments and social movements operationalise emotion b) how emotionsmobilize people to participate in environmental movements and c) how emotions affect environmentalattitudes in mass publics?The research framework designed around this question will begin with a first year developing a detailedresearch framework and extensive literature review, followed by a second year devoted to datacollection. The data gathered will then be used in the third year to fulfil two objectives.First, to establish the impact that emotions have on mass publics in relation to environmental issues,using lab experiments to investigate the impact of environmental-related emotional stimuli on politicalbehaviour and attitudes in the UK and USA. This thesis will here build upon existing research byattempting to distinguish and explore the discrete impacts of the emotional dimensions of anger,enthusiasm, and anxiety on how environmental attitudes are formed and how they change.Given the possibilities of new environmental developments generating new areas of research, thepotential to conduct a natural experiment should also be recognised, building on similarly designedstudies exploring how unexpected threats impact upon political attitudes.Second, to explore the ways that actors employ emotions in the operations of climate governance,studying the use of emotional power by actors in climate governance contexts, moving beyond theisolated, individual and reception-focused analysis that characterises current environmental emotionalresearch. This will be achieved through a quantitative emotional discourse analysis of environmentalspeeches and policy manifestos from governmental elites and activist groups, a newly emerging methodwith this thesis its first use in environmental politics. This analysis will be used to differentiate betweeneach emotional dimension of AIT and explore the relative status in climate discourse, something thatonce again has not been done before.In combining both research objectives, this thesis aims to reveal the nature of emotional discursivepower as wielded by climate actors, and the impacts this has on mass publics, in order to betterunderstand the role of emotion in climate governance. In advancing understandings of attitudeformation and climate communication, this research may contribute to the establishment of aprogressive hegemony of climate policy and the preservation of our natural world. More generally, thisthesis will further understandings of democratic health, helping us to understand the impact ofemotions in political discourse upon popular democratic engagement and understanding.