Employing Comics Storytelling to Promote Climate Change Mitigation: An Experimental Study Grounded on the Situational Theory of Public

This study examines the potential of comics as an infotainment strategy for engaging the public in climate change mitigation from the perspective of the situational theory of public. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment (N = 320) was conducted to evaluate the effects of narrative forms (comics vs. text-only), problem recognition (high vs. low), and constraint recognition (high vs. low) on individuals' intention to mitigate climate change. Three-way ANCOVA results suggest that the comic narratives combining high problem recognition and low constraint recognition about climate change will significantly increase individuals' intention to engage in climate change mitigation behaviors. Furthermore, the effect was found to be mediated by individuals' proactive climate change information seeking, involving the self-directed acquisition of climate change-related knowledge. In contrast, the passive route of climate change information processing, which involves incidental exposure and reactive engagement with information regarding climate change, failed to demonstrate significant mediation effects.