This study aims to propose a theoretical framework for public segmentation to identify various publics and conceptualize an activist public concerned with environmental issues, focusing specifically on the issue of climate change.
By incorporating the summation method of public segmentation from strategic communication research and levels of anger, this study identifies four types of environmental publics, using a survey with 585 people in the United States of America.
This study identifies four distinct environmental publics in relation to the climate change issue: (1) activist public (high activeness/high anger), (2) active-calm public (high activeness/low anger), (3) inactive-angry public (low activeness/high anger) and (4) unconcerned public (low activeness/low anger). This study explores the relationships between four environmental publics and their information seeking on climate change and engagement in environmental activism, both online and offline.
The study provides a segmentation framework for conceptualizing environmental publics and examines the relationships between environmental publics and their information seeking and activism behaviors. It contributes to existing segmentation literature by providing a new framework that can be used in segmenting publics. Also, the findings help practitioners strategically manage communication with different publics.
