Framing for action? Assessing microplastic-related threat potential for planetary health as a political participation catalyzer

As the 1.5-degree goal threatens to grow more distant, the need to address human behavior in strategies to mitigate climate change further increases. With recent evidence indicating harmful effects of microplastic exposure to human and natural systems, we tested based on Rogers’ Protection Motivation Theory whether planetary health framing, which is considered a promising tool for climate change communication, is suitable for raising concerns about the issue. Following a mixed-methods design, we employed a 2 x 2 between-subjects vignette experiment (N = 898) to explore the connection between planetary health framing and one’s intention to participate politically across different levels of psychological distance, while strengthening the understanding of the behavior itself. Therefore, we subjected 1,992 open-text responses to a qualitative analysis assessing which dimensions of political participation are considered relevant, and what obstacles populate the gap between intention to participate and actual participation. The experimental data shows that varying the planetary health condition does not result in significant differences, whereas distance framing showed an inversed effect pattern contrary to what our hypotheses expected. This highlights the urgent need for further research on planetary health as a framing subject. The qualitative findings on behavior dimensions provide an enriched proposal for adapting existing instruments to measure political participation in a variety of public life contexts. Data on barriers to political participation show various internal and external reasons that can be used to develop a scale for response costs, which could lead to a more comprehensive model of political participation readiness in the context of planetary health framing.