Issue: Lab-sponsored Research

Lessons from Two Years of Storytelling in Rural America shares what happens when rigorous research meets relationship-based storytelling rooted in rural communities. Produced by Resource Rural in collaboration with the Climate Advocacy Lab, this report distills insights from more than 200 people-first stories across 41 states and two large-scale message tests with over 7,500 rural participants. Together, these learnings offer practical guidance for anyone working to build trust, understanding, and durable support for public investment in rural America.

The landscape for clean energy buildout in the US has changed dramatically in the last year. Yet one constant is the ongoing barrage of mis- and dis-information1 from a variety of actors, from industry-backed anti-wind front groups to the President. The narratives and debates continue to evolve, however, and this report collects relevant research and insights from practice from the past 12 months, to provide guidance for anti-disinformation practitioners on two key emerging topics in the clean energy information space:
Affordability: electricity costs and clean energy
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)

Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and the Climate Advocacy Lab fielded a statewide survey of Vermonters about attitudes towards their state’s Climate Superfund Act. We found that a majority of respondents agreed with the intention behind the law of holding fossil fuel companies financially accountable for climate damages incurred by the state. However, none of the messaging approaches we attempted seem very effective in increasing support for the policy. Qualitative responses suggest that the Act is not well-known and, while respondents favor corporate accountability, they also have concerns about the policy’s legality and government transparency. Notably, even among some of those who responded that they agree with the Climate Superfund, there was confusion about how fossil fuel companies contribute to climate-related impacts like flooding, suggesting the need for greater popular education around the chain of attribution. Distrust of government also surfaced as a concern about the Act.

The WaterHub and the Climate Advocacy Lab collaborated on research to investigate audience perceptions of government investment in and responsibility for disaster resilience. Though support was widespread for a government role in disaster resilience, those with the strongest support for a government role were more liberal, and held more progressive values, such as environmentalism and compassion, and believe in government involvement and community-based solutions. A test of four natural defense message frames (Collectivist, Equity, Individual Benefit, Cost Savings) found that they all increased support generally, especially among conservatives. In terms of likelihood to take action, the Collectivist and Equity frames were only effective among non-conservatives, whereas the Individual Benefit and Cost Savings frames were only effective among conservatives.

From the latest on perennial topics such as engaging rural audiences, to new frontier insights on building support for climate superfunds or for battery storage, join the Climate Advocacy Lab and our research partners on the ground across the country for an hour packed with presentations on our latest research. Presentations include projects in collaboration with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (message test among Six Americas audience segments, especially among Asian & Latino populations), Evangelical Environmental Network (testing testimonial videos), Water Hub (disaster resilience opinions), Vermont Public Interest Research Group (Climate Superfund Act attitudes), Alliance for Climate Transition (maintaining support for battery energy storage systems), and Resource Rural (persuasive message framing and rural narrative analysis).

This year, we awarded nine climate justice and frontline organizations with a small grant to support efforts in producing reports, case studies, zines and other types of media that uplifts lessons learned from their on the ground organizing and advocacy work.