Coastal Services Center

As coastal resource managers strive to help communities plan for and adapt to the coming impacts of climate change, many are struggling with the question of how to educate the public in a way that will motivate them to act. In order to better target information and program support, managers in Oregon and Maine are using social science to better understand the concerns, knowledge, motivations, and decision-making processes of specific populations.

Climate Variability and Coastal Community Resilience: Developing and Testing a National Model of State-Based Outreach is a two-year effort by the Oregon and Maine Sea Grant programs that aims to develop and test a model of public outreach about climate change that may ultimately be valuable to coastal managers around the country.

“I believe that research into public understanding and perceptions of the climate issue must guide public communication,” says Joe Cone, the project leader and assistant director of Oregon Sea Grant and head of its communications team. “This project shows how coastal communities can benefit from an approach to climate engagement and communication that’s based on specific behavioral, decision, and learning research.”

While the efforts in Oregon and Maine are parallel, the states have significant differences in anticipated climate change impacts and in the communities and economic interests that will most likely be affected. As a result, there are differences in each state’s target populations, project goals, and resulting outreach strategies.

What is the same in both efforts and carries over for other coastal managers is the focus on getting an in-depth understanding of targeted groups to improve climate change communication.

“The intended users of our climate change assistance are at the center of the project,” Cone says. “Using a behavioral decision-making approach, we conducted interviews, focus groups, and surveys to understand both their needs and, importantly, their constraints, and developed strategies and specific interventions based on what we learned.”

For instance, multi-part videos were developed for both states that specifically address the concerns and decisions that the target populations were concerned about making, and the information is presented by sources they trust, Cone says.

In Maine, a five-year outreach plan was developed that focuses on filling in information gaps identified by focus groups and in surveys, such as the creation of a hazard mitigation guide and interactive website.

In Oregon, Cone says, two target communities were identified in the survey process, and Sea Grant is “helping them make progress on planning for climate change by explicitly introducing learning—both about climate change and their diverse values—into the group decision-making process.”

“We learned that we can no longer assume that we know everything about our audiences and know what they need,” says Kristen Grant, marine extension associate for Maine Sea Grant and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. “We have to understand their needs, interests, and barriers to action.”

Science of Changing Behavior

Coastal managers may believe that if they provide the “public” with information about climate change and its impacts—sea level rise or increasing intensities of coastal storms, for instance—that people will take appropriate actions, such as elevating their homes.

Social scientists, however, are finding that providing reliable data and information is only part of the communication process. For example, two people in the same situation who are given the same information may make drastically different decisions. What scientists recognize is that human behavior is extremely complex and that this is particularly true when choices are made concerning personal risks, such as evacuating for a hurricane.

The social sciences are probing the practices, processes, and effects that influence attitude, decision-making, and behavior change. This body of research, Cone says, is critical to communicating climate change.

Know Your Target

The key to any social science-based communications or outreach effort is to be very specific about your target audience. Cone, however, prefers the term “target population” because, he says, “the term ‘audience’ prejudices the nature of your relationship and your thinking. It has the connotation that whoever you want to talk to is waiting for you to provide them information.”

In 2007, with funding from the NOAA Climate Program Office, Oregon and Maine worked with teams of scientists, faculty, educators, coastal managers, and committees of stakeholders to design focus groups, interviews, and surveys for targeted populations to determine their attitudes, knowledge, and concerns about climate change.

In Oregon, the target population was coastal decision makers, such as city managers, county planners, state agency personnel, private developers, bankers, and realtors. In Maine, both coastal property owners and elected and appointed municipal officials were target groups.

Survey Says

Conducted in 2008, the project surveys are believed to be the largest studies to date to focus on U.S. coastal state populations and the challenge of adapting to the expected effects of coastal climate change, Cone says.

Among the insights from the surveys was that coastal managers in both states should be using terms other than “climate change.”

“We’re using the terms ‘climate variability,’ ‘flooding,’ and ‘accelerated erosion’ to get around the politics of ‘climate change,’” says Kathleen Leyden, director of the Maine Coastal Program and a project partner. “Our audience is already seeing the impacts of climate variability, such as an increase in intensity of storms and more frequent flooding from 100-year storms, but they may not identify these events as symptoms of climate change.”

The surveys in both states also showed that coastal officials and owners of coastal property don’t need to be persuaded that climate change is happening. They believe that both government and individuals should begin taking action now to adapt to expected effects, but questions remain about who should be doing what. A lack of information about risks and resources were barriers to action.

In Oregon, 300 coastal decision makers responded to the survey, and in Maine, 548 property owners and 55 coastal municipal officials took the surveys. Focus groups and interviews were also conducted in both states.

Filling in Gaps

Both Oregon and Maine have analyzed the survey and focus group data and are using the information to move forward with helping their target groups prepare for climate change.

Major outreach products for both states are videos that were tailored to address the needs and concerns of the target audiences.

“The DVD has been unbelievably well received,” says Grant. A users’ guide that accompanies Maine’s documentary has been used to facilitate a series of discussion groups, and the video was shown on Maine public television.

Maine also has developed a five-year outreach plan that focuses on filling in information gaps identified by respondents. To help get them the information and resources they need, a coastal hazard mitigation guide is almost complete, an interactive website is under development, and a series of workshops will be held for coastal property owners and municipal officials.

A Learning Process

In a series of workshops with two target communities, Oregon Sea Grant is using concept mapping and influence diagramming, techniques drawn from learning research and risk analysis, to help local participants visualize their collective understanding of the effects of climate change, assess their associated risks, and display their preferences for responding.

“That shared understanding then enriches their decision-making,” Cone says.

“The success of preparing for climate change,” he says, “will include local knowledge, informed participation, and a way to update that knowledge and participation over the long span of attention that climate change is likely to require. Rather than assuming that we’ll do it once and be done, we assume that adaptive management likely will be a means and community resilience a desired end—and neither adaptive management nor resilience planning are trivial pursuits.”

“We’re depending on Sea Grant to bring this set of tools into the equation,” says Bob Bailey, manager of the Oregon Coastal Management Program. “The information they are providing from the surveys about what is going on out there in the real world will carry over into other issues and efforts we’re undertaking.”

Bailey adds, “This is a capacity that all coastal states could benefit from. It’s really important for coastal managers to accommodate social science.”

For more information on Climate Variability and Coastal Community Resilience: Developing and Testing a National Model of State-Based Outreach, contact Joe Cone at (541) 737-0756, or joe.cone@oregonstate.edu. You may also contact Kristen Grant at (207) 646-1555, ext. 115, or kngrant@maine.edu, Esperanza Stancioff at (207) 832-0343, or esp@umext.maine.edu, or Kathleen Leyden at (207) 287-3144, or Kathleen.Leyden@maine.gov.

For More Information

To learn more about Climate Variability and Coastal Community Resilience: Developing and Testing a National Model of State-Based Outreach and about the use of social science in hazards and climate change communication, go to

Maine’s Building a Resilient Coast documentary,
www.seagrant.umaine.edu/extension/coastal-community-resilience

Maine’s technical report on “Climate Variability and Coastal Community Resilience:
Developing and Testing a National Model of State-Based Outreach,”
www.seagrant.umaine.edu/program/SARPdocs/SARP_tech_report_4-23_final_draft.pdf

Oregon Sea Grant climate webpage,
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/themes/climate/

Oregon Coast Climate Change videos,
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/research/ClimateChange/oregon-video.html

“An Analysis of a Survey of Oregon Coast Decision Makers Regarding Climate Change,”
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs/s09001.pdf

NOAA Coastal Services Center social science publications,
www.csc.noaa.gov/publications.html