U.S. National Park Service Climate Change Interpretation: A National Study

Abstract

Climate change has become an increasingly controversial topic in the United States. Because U.S. National Park Service (NPS) sites are both beloved and increasingly threatened by climate change, NPS interpretive programs are a unique context to study climate change communication. In this manuscript, we first characterize the key interpretive principles and climate change communication elements incorporated into NPS climate change interpretation training. Then, through observations and visitor surveys, we examined interpretive programs to explore (1) the relationship between the inclusion of climate change content and participants' quality assessment and (2) whether certain communication strategies were more or less related to participants' intentions to take climate-related action. We found that the incorporation of climate change content was not related to audiences' perceptions of program quality. We also identified six communications strategies related to audience members' climate-related behavioral intentions following interpretive programs: ensuring personal relevance to the audience, including a specific call-to-action, increasing perceptions of self- and collective efficacy, referencing the human role in causing climate change, referring to scientific climate research, and including hope. We expect that these findings may be specific to visitors who decide to attend interpretive programs at NPS sites in United States.