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>Climate change interpretation at U.S. public lands: Assessing the effectiveness of NASA's Earth to Sky program with respect to participant onsite experiences, previous behaviors and Yale's Six Americas classification.
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Climate change interpretation at U.S. public lands: Assessing the effectiveness of NASA's Earth to Sky program with respect to participant onsite experiences, previous behaviors and Yale's Six Americas classification.
The Earth to Sky partnership between NASA, the National Park Service and the National Wildlife Refuge System seeks to bring climate science to the general public as they visit national public lands. This study aims to measure the effectiveness of climate change related interpretive offerings that have resulted from the Earth to Sky project and to determine which demographic and psychographic factors have an influence on how the program is experienced. In addition, this research uses the Yale Six Americas segmentation to generate a profile of public lands visitors as a subset of the general population based upon their beliefs, attitudes and opinions about global warming (Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf & Smith, 2011). Program effectiveness was measured using four separate outcomes: two of which represent standards of interpretation -- (1) intellectual connections and (2) emotional connections -- and two measuring standards of environmental education -- (3) program evaluation and (4) behavioral intentions (Camargo & Shavelson, 2009 National Park Service, 2011, United States, Duffin & Iacuzzi, 2006, and Wilke 1993).;Surveys were collected at 8 national public lands sites throughout the summer of 2011 using purposive sampling. Then, researchers used SAS software (version 9.2) to classify respondents into one of the "Six Americas" segments. The software was also used to run a stepwise multiple regression analysis for each of the four outcomes to determine which demographic (age, race, political affiliation etc.) and psychographic (belief in global warming, perception of human or natural cause of global warming, trust level of various sources for global warming information etc.) factors individually and collectively influenced the overall evaluation of the program's effectiveness (Cohen, 2003 and Creswell, 2008). Finally, an analysis of each significant demographic and psychographic factor was then run using t-test, one-way ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc tests, Kendall's tau-b, Spearman's rho (rs) or Pearson's r to determine which factors had a significant individual influence on each of the four outcomes (Coble, Lin, Coble, 2011).;The results of this study indicate some communication strategies that interpreters can use to develop more effective programs. In this study, talks and illustrated programs were more effective than impersonal interpretation like exhibits and publications. In addition, visitors who felt less informed about ways to reduce global warming and those who have not thought about the issue in the past are more likely to form intellectual connections. These results recommend that interpreters develop interpersonal programs that use a hierarchy of sophistication (Kohen & Sikoryak, 2005). Furthermore, the large proportion of respondents in this study who believe that climate change is occurring and want to see action taken by themselves and their fellow citizens indicates that visitors to national public lands sites may be ready to move beyond informational programs and products toward those which encouraged action. As such, interpretive experiences should offer opportunities for visitors to practice climate change mitigation behaviors during the program and encourage continued actions through a community of practice by either providing onsite action groups or making people aware of community action groups that they can join (Pike & Herr, 2009, Pike, Doppelt, & Herr, 2010 and Wenger & Snyder, 2000). In addition, the demographics and psychographics of each visitor varied. Republican visitors made fewer emotional connections than democrats, independents and those reporting an "other" political affiliation. White respondents made fewer intellectual connections during climate change related interpretive offerings as did those who most trusted religious leaders. Bearing in mind such variation in how each visitor experiences a program, interpreters are encouraged to reframe the issue of climate change to make it more relevant to people's lives and to make climate change mitigation more consistent with a variety of values and beliefs (Groffman, Burgin, Andrea, Stylinski, Nisbet, Duarte, Jordan & Cary, 2010, Nisbet 2009 and Shome & Marx, 2009).;In the future this research team should continue more detailed data analysis of the Six Americas segmentation of respondents as compared to the general population and delve into the qualitative data collected during the survey period. Meanwhile further research into the nuances of trust of different climate change information sources can be explored and research into the effectiveness of climate change education that uses the hierarchy of sophistication should be done to determine whether providing a variety of levels of information increase or decrease interpretive outcomes. Through recommendations from research such as this study and future studies that expand the literature on climate change communication, the research community can provide the tools and knowledge needed to arouse public engagement and inspire action toward a more hopeful future.
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