Framing climate change mitigation technology: The impact of risk versus benefit messaging on support for carbon capture and storage

There has been a steep growth in the number of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects globally. However, Americans remain relatively unfamiliar with this climate change mitigation technology, even in communities where the projects would be sited. Using the technology acceptance model as our theoretical framework, this study examined how benefit- and risk-framed messages about CCS might influence community members’ support for CCS deployment. Through a messaging experiment, we found that exposure to the relative benefit or risk of CCS influenced public support for CCS through risk-benefit perception and affective evaluation of the technology.