By Mallika Talwar, Stephanie Ratcliffe, Joshua Low, Jennifer Marlon 

Takeaways: 

• Museums are highly trusted institutions, and many Americans want museums of all types, including natural history museums, zoos, aquaria, and even museums of art and history to engage their communities in climate action. 

• Tools like YPCCC’s Six Americas Super Short Survey help museums, like The Wild Center in upstate New York, better understand their audiences and develop targeted communication strategies. 

• Social science insights from YPCCC and others, can help museums break the climate spiral of silence and empower visitors to participate in climate solutions. 

The climate crisis is putting virtually everyone and everything we know and love at risk. Museums hold remarkable power as cultural institutions and can use their unique position to educate diverse visitors about the climate crisis and inspire climate action. A growing number of museums are designing exhibitions and educational programs that explain the climate crisis and demonstrate solutions, but they are faced with common challenges: What does our audience already think, feel, and know about climate change? How do we meet them where they are? How do we inspire action, and can we have fun along the way? 

YPCCC’s research and insights can inform museums’ communication strategies and help craft narratives that resonate with their audiences and encourage them to get involved and take action. YPCCC tools like the Six Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY) (Chryst et al., 2018) provide museums and other organizations with a powerful way to understand their audiences so they can meet them where they are. 

MUSEUMS ARE UNIQUELY POSITIONED TO COMMUNICATE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE 

It is hard to overstate the cultural power of museums. In our current age characterized by a global "trust deficit" (Merritt, 2019), museums are one of the few institutions that continue to hold high public trust, far beyond newspapers, governments, corporations, social media, and even researchers and scientists. In fact, a

study from 2021 (Merritt, 2021) found that museums were trusted second only to friends and family. This trust is bipartisan and has only increased since the pandemic. In addition, surveys have shown that

nearly three-quarters of Americans (Merritt, 2021) believe museums should suggest behavior change that supports their mission. 

When it comes to communicating about climate change, among both frequent museum-goers and the general US public, far more people support museums talking about climate change (Wilkening Consulting & American Alliance of Museums, 2022) than those who believe museums shouldn’t. And this is true for museums of all types including natural history, art, history, and children’s museums. In short, museums can be important catalysts for social change — in fact, people expect them to do this. 

USING SASSY TO UNDERSTAND AUDIENCES AND CRAFT TARGETED MESSAGING STRATEGIES 

The first rule of effective communication is to know your audience. This is especially true for museums, whose audiences vary widely. By surveying their visitors and other stakeholders, museums can better understand their audiences and design more effective exhibits that address their unique needs and questions. 

In 2020, The Wild Center — a natural history museum located in the Adirondacks in New York — decided to develop a climate-focused exhibit. Given its rural location in a Republican congressional district, museum staff faced the challenge of communicating climate in a region where they believed there were conflicting priorities and political views. To help address this challenge, the museum used YPCCC’s Six Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY). This is a four-question survey that categorizes respondents into Global Warming’s Six Americas segments - each of which responds to the issue of climate in their own distinct way. Surveying their audience with SASSY revealed that — contrary to their staff’s assumptions — a large majority of their audience was Alarmed (51%) and Concerned (31%) about climate change, and only a small minority were Doubtful (3%) or Dismissive (2%). In fact, the results were so dramatically different from their expectations, that the museum staff conducted the survey a second time with their more local — and likely more conservative — winter visitors to verify their findings. The results of the second survey were essentially identical. 

The Alarmed are convinced that global warming is real, human-caused, and an urgent threat but are mostly unaware of what they can do to solve the problem. Learning that the majority of their audience was Alarmed and Concerned meant that The Wild Center needed to reorient their exhibit strategy to focus on solutions and invite visitors to participate in climate action. 

In July 2022, the museum opened its Climate Solutions exhibit. The exhibit includes a Solutions Tinkering Studio where visitors explore climate solutions. It also includes a “Taking Action on Climate Change ‘’ exhibit with stories of local climate heroes from diverse backgrounds. This exhibit showcases a variety of ways people can use their talents to address the climate crisis. (Highlighting personal stories is another best practice in climate communication.) 

“SASSY saved us about a year in exhibit development because we didn’t have to spend as much time as we normally do in prototyping and front-end evaluation. With SASSY, we were very quickly able to check our assumptions, understand our audience’s needs, be precise in our targeting and focus our attention on the Alarmed and Concerned. It gave us the confidence to quickly hone in on a solutions frame for our exhibit.”

- Stephanie Ratcliffe, Executive Director, The Wild Center 

Exit interviews of visitors conducted by the Kera Collective showed that visitors found the exhibit’s messaging to be clear and effective. They reported that the exhibit helped them realize that many practical solutions to the climate crisis already exist. Importantly, the exhibit left them feeling hopeful. Visitors also appreciated its inclusive approach and its ability to successfully highlight the disproportionate impacts of climate change on frontline communities. 

APPLYING SOCIAL SCIENCE INSIGHTS TO BREAK THE SPIRAL OF CLIMATE SILENCE 

In addition to helping them better understand their audiences, YPCCC’s narrative research can also help museums develop messaging that has been shown to be effective at persuading and inspiring action. 

Busting the myth of climate indifference 

YPCCC’s research has shown that Americans frequently and significantly underestimate how many other Americans think global warming is happening (Ballew et al., 2019). Other studies have shown that Americans underestimate support for major climate policies by nearly half (Sparkman et al., 2022). This also contributes to a "spiral of silence" where despite widespread support for climate action, people rarely discuss climate change in their daily lives (Maibach et al., 2016). Museums such as the Climate Museum in New York City are working to actively bust this myth of climate indifference by highlighting wide-spread support for climate policies. For instance, the Climate Museum’s “Busting the Myth” wall highlights that a majority - 66% of Americans - support a range of climate policies (Leiserowitz et al., 2023). This is an effective communication strategy because we know that social norms play a vital role in encouraging pro-climate beliefs and behaviors. 

Addressing barriers to action by promoting collective efficacy 

Research has shown that “collective efficacy” – the belief that by working together with others we can create change – is an important motivator for collective action. Many museums are successfully using innovative and interactive techniques to boost collective efficacy. For instance, the Climate Museum’s “Climate Action Commitment Wall” encourages visitors to share individual actions they can take to address global warming through stickers that are then pasted on a display wall. Through this, visitors are able to visualize how their individual actions fit together to create a collective movement. This, in turn, inspires others to think about their place in the movement as well. The Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego similarly uses its “Climate Action Wall” to catalyze climate conversations and point visitors towards collective actions. 

The power of personal storytelling 

Storytelling is perhaps the most effective tool in our climate communication toolbox. It has the power to deeply affect people and catalyze climate action by creating emotional connections, amplifying diverse perspectives — especially of those on the frontlines of climate change — and igniting hope. Museums are uniquely positioned to provide compelling stories that go beyond the scientific facts. The Birch Aquarium’s Beyster Family Little Blue Penguins is designed to take visitors on an emotional journey with the aim of encouraging visitors to fall in love with this wonderful and unique species. The exhibit then channels visitors’ love for these adorable birds into feelings of care by explaining how climate change impacts these birds’ lives. Finally, through the Climate Action Wall visitors are encouraged to take action to protect these special creatures. The Wild Center takes a different approach—by telling the personal stories of everyday people, their exhibit helps visitors connect to real stories of climate impact and effective action, inspiring hope and action for a liveable future. 

CONCLUSION 

Museums across the country like The Wild Center, the Climate Museum, and Birch Aquarium at Scripps are leveraging their unique ability to connect with diverse audiences to inspire pro-climate understanding and action. YPCCC’s research insights and tools are helping museums better understand their audiences, craft tailored climate messages, and develop narratives that break the spiral of silence and catalyze climate action. 

REFERENCES 

Ballew, M., Gustafson, A., Bergquist, P., Goldberg, M., Rosenthal, S., Kotcher, J., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2019). Americans Underestimate How Many Others in the U.S. Think Global Warming is Happening. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/ameri- cans-underestimate-how-many 

-others-in-the-u-s-think-global-warming-is-happening/ 

Chryst, B., Marlon, J., Linden, S. v. d., Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., & Roser-Renouf, C. (2018). Global warming’s “Six Americas Short Survey”: Audience segmentation of climate change views using a four question instrument. Environmental Communication, 12(8), 1109-1122. 

Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Rosenthal, S., Kotcher, J., Car- man, J., Lee, S., Verner, M., Ballew, M., Ansah, P., Badullovich, N., Myers, T., Goldberg, M., & Marlon, J. (2023). Climate Change in the American Mind: Politics & Policy, December 2022. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/poli- tics-global-warming-december-2022/ 

Maibach, E., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., Roser-Renouf, C., & Cutler, M. (2016). Is there a climate “spiral of silence” in America? Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-spiral-silence-america/ 

Merritt, E. (2019, April 17). TrendsWatch 2019: Truth, Trust, and Fake News – American Alliance of Museums. American Alliance of Museums. Retrieved November 13, 2023, from

https://www.aam-us.org/2019/04/17/trendswatch-2019-truth-trust-and-fake-news/

Merritt, E. (2021, October 5). Exploring Museums and Trust 2021 – American Alliance of Museums. American Alliance of Museums. Retrieved November 13, 2023, from

https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Museums-and-Trust-2021.pdf

Sparkman, G., Geiger, N., & Weber, E. U. (2022). Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half. Nature Communications, 13(-), 4779. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y

Wilkening Consulting & American Alliance of Museums. (2022, October 18). WLK Climate Change 1. Wilkening

Consulting. Retrieved November 13, 2023, from

https://wilkeningconsulting.com/climate-change-in-museums-part-1-content-and-sustainability/

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