FutureCoast: A Playful Way to Assess Public Perceptions for Better Climate Change Communication

Figures & data

Figure 1. Frequency of voicemail setting year chosen by player. Part of the player experience is choosing a year in which one’s voicemail comes from. This graph demonstrates the frequency of voicemails by year over the game-play period.

Figure 2. The prevalence of content and response code: complexity, expressed as average complexity z-score, showing the likelihood of each code co-occurring with other codes (top), and prevalence, expressed as the frequency of the code within all voice mails (bottom).

Figure 3. Bar graph showing the prevalence of sentiment codes where 1.00 equals code presence in 100% of voicemails.

Figure 4. Alluvial diagram showing the relationships between code types and the communities in which they occur most frequently. All codes considered in our analyses are found down the center of the diagram. The thickness of each band indicates relative code prevalence within its code category. The code category each code belongs to is indicated on the left of the diagram, and the community each code falls into is indicated to the right. (*Includes content codes that did not meet intercoder agreement. **Indicates climate change response (CCR) codes that did not have sufficient intercoder reliability to carry out full statistical analysis in other parts of the study but were included here as a complementary pair to other CCR codes.)

Figure 5. Comparative Analysis of the FutureCoast Codes and 2014 US National Climate Assessment Sectors (Climate Change Science Program (US), 2014). (*Includes voicemail content codes/themes that neither had sufficient intercoder reliability nor corresponded to a NCA sector (i.e. Economy, Infrastructure, Industry/Business, and Society). **Ecosystems/Landscapes did not have sufficient intercoder reliability to carry out full statistical analysis in other parts of the study, but was included here to demonstrate an overlap with the NCA sectors.)

Table 1. Frequency of occurrence based on word searches of the 2014 and 2018 National Climate Assessment reports.

	2014 NCA		2018 NCA		Ratio 2018/2014
	Freq	Freq/# report pages (829)	Freq	Freq/# report pages (1515)		Normalized by report page length
Conflict	24	3%	112	7%	4.7	2.7
Migration	83	10%	179	12%	2.2	1.2
Weather	390	47%	620	41%	1.6	0.9
Governance	50	6%	59	4%	1.2	0.7
Technology	114	14%	128	8%	1.1	0.6
Policy	282	34%	304	20%	1.1	0.6

Figure A1. Image of a chronofact, a real-life object that enhanced authenticity of gameplay.

Table

Code Category	Code	Description of Code	Prevalence Score
Content	Technology	Technological innovations or mainstream use of current technology; these can include products, adaptive solutions, and geoengineering.	0.33
Content	Weather	Extreme heat or cold, extreme weather events (e.g. flooding, drought, cyclones, etc.), weather pattern shifts, seasonal change; does not include acid rain.	0.31
Content	Governance/Policy	Municipal/state/national government action, policy (e.g. carbon accounting policies); does not include informal community groups/actions.	0.22
Content	Food	Agriculture, fishing, and general mentions of shortage/rationing.	0.20
Content	Energy	Renewable energy or fossil fuel infrastructure, policy, technology, cost, availability, etc.	0.16
Content	Health	Biotechnology, genetic modification, adverse health impacts (e.g. respiratory distress, heat stroke, etc.), healthcare costs.	0.14
Content	Other*	Economic issues, infrastructure, industry & business, social issues, ecosystems & landscapes.	0.14
Content	Water	Water shortages and rationing, water disputes, saltwater intrusion.	0.13
Content	Conflict	Rebellions & protests, war.	0.07
Content	Migration	Human migration, both large scale or individual.	0.07
Climate Change Response	Challenge**	Negative effects of climate change (e.g. resource scarcity, energy & transportation interruptions, conflict, disasters).	0.60
Climate Change Response	Adaptation**	Adaptive responses to climate change – any change in behavior/lifestyle due to environmental factors (e.g. adaptive technology, adaptive policy, behavior change, migration, resilient infrastructure).	0.42
Climate Change Response	Opportunity	Positive outcomes due to climate change (e.g. agriculture and industry expansion, increase in jobs).	0.22
Climate Change Response	Mitigation	Technological or behavioral change that reduces emissions (e.g. sustainable transportation, carbon counting, lowering energy consumption, renewable energy).	0.16
Sentiment	Happy/ Excited	Happy, Pleased, Content, Excited, Enthused, Hopeful	0.31
Sentiment	Neutral/ Robotic	Neutral, Emotionless, Robotic, Calm, Relaxed, Peaceful	0.26
Sentiment	Scared/ Panicked	Scared, Concerned, Worried, Distressed, Panicked, Shocked	0.24
Sentiment	Sad/ Defeated	Defeated, Pessimistic, Resigned, Sad, Disappointed, Regretful	0.19
Sentiment	Angry/ Annoyed	Angry, Irritated, Annoyed, Frustrated	0.14
Sentiment	Indeterminate*	Sentiment could not be determined.	0.02

Climate Change Science Program (US). (2014). Climate change impacts in the United States, highlights: US national climate assessment. US Global Change Research Program.

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