Pamela Feetham

Doctor of Philosophy, (Marketing)
Study Completed: 2017
Massey Business School

Citation

Thesis Title
Using Marketing Concepts to Facilitate Upstream Public Engagement with Science

Read article at Massey Research Online: MRO icon

Understanding public perceptions of climate engineering present a challenge for science communicators. Climate engineering is an umbrella term for a variety of technologies that have the potential to help reduce global warming, inclusive of carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation reflective methods. Ms Feetham researched how marketing concepts facilitate upstream public engagement by using marketing metrics to benchmark citizen's evaluations of six climate engineering techniques in Australia and New Zealand. She found that in both countries reaction to climate engineering technologies is predominantly negative, although carbon dioxide removal techniques are viewed more positively than solar radiation reflective techniques. Additionally, her research investigated whether intuitive or deliberative thinking impacted participant's evaluations of climate engineering and found greater deliberative thinking is associated with more negative evaluations. However, this was not the case in New Zealand indicating evaluations are moderated by the country of study, or the prior beliefs of the country's population.

Supervisors
Professor Malcolm Wright
Associate Professor Margie Comrie