Mitigation versus adaptation: climate-change-related appeals and pondering the future

Purpose Responding to a recent editorial call for sustainable development (Truong and Saunders, 2021), this study aims to explore the persuasiveness of climate-change-related appeals. Design/methodology/approach Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to test the effect of climate-change-related appeals on persuasion, the underlying mechanism causing that effect and associated boundary conditions. Statistical results were based on analysis of variance, mediation and moderation analysis. Findings Adaptation-oriented appeals are more persuasive than mitigation-oriented appeals. Specifically, adaptation (versus mitigation) appeals activate a self-regulation process that encourages people to think about the future, making them more likely to address climate change. This effect is salient when consumers’ environmental concerns are low. Practical implications To boost message persuasiveness, marketers and public policymakers could construct abstract and long-horizon climate-change-related appeals and provide prompts or interventions to promote people’s elaborations about potential outcomes. Social implications To boost message persuasiveness, marketers and public policymakers could construct abstract and long-horizon climate-change-related appeals and provide prompts or interventions to promote people’s elaborations about potential outcomes. Originality/value Revealing mitigation and adaptation climate-change-related appeals yield diverse effects.