Virtue or passion? How moral frames in climate change appeals elicit emotions and change opinions

Political climate change debates make use of different moral frames of climate change diagnoses and solutions. While it is argued that moral frames are more effective when they invoke strong moral emotions, thus far the relationship between real-world political moral viewpoints on climate change and the arousal of related emotions, behavior, and attitudes has not been studied. In this paper, we raise the question of whether existing moral climate frames are effective through emotions (“passion”) or through direct moral persuasion (“virtue”). We compare three viewpoints on the causes of and solutions to climate change: the mainstream, the green-left, and the populist right viewpoint. Grounded in moral foundations and appraisal theory, we conceptualize these viewpoints on the causes and solutions of the climate crisis as moral appeals embedding appraisals to specific emotions. In the next step, we use these specific appeals as input for a 3 × 2 between-subjects factorial survey experiment with a control condition among a diverse sample of 1708 Dutch respondents, varying the inclusion of presented diagnoses. Our results show that the effectiveness of moral climate change appeals depends on passion, and that widespread climate action is unlikely based on the most prominent political climate messages.