Introduction and Purpose. Climate change communication is an effective way to support climate-friendly behavior. However, being directly confronted with one's owns limits and shortcomings regarding climate-friendly behavior can lead to defensive reactions, such as reactance. These reactions can affect attitudes as well as (communicative) behavior. The study aimed to illuminate the relationship between climate change communication, psychological reactance and the willingness to discuss climate change issues.
Method. In an experimental design, we varied whether the climate impact of clothing was framed as an individual (e.g., an individual buying clothes) or a non-individual issue (e.g., shops selling clothes) in a short video on the "journey of a white T-shirt". The study's hypotheses were pre-registered: We expected that the individual framing would lead to more reactance and less willingness to discuss climate issues than the non-individual framing.
Results. Linear regression models showed no direct significant effect of the manipulation on reactance or willingness to discuss climate change. However, exploratory mediation analyses showed a significant positive effect of the individual manipulation on perceived freedom threat, which in turn significantly increased reactance. The direct effect of the individual manipulation on reactance, when controlling for freedom threat, was significant and negative, indicating opposing indirect and direct effects. For the willingness to discuss climate change, perceived freedom threat partially mediated the effects in the direction of the initial hypotheses.
Conclusions. The findings suggest that the framing of climate change communication may influence reactance and the willingness to discuss climate change issues through opposing pathways. These results highlight the complex role of freedom threat as a mediator in how framing impacts both reactance and discussion willingness. Insights from open-ended responses are further examined and integrated within the quantitative findings. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.