Climate change as fake news. Positive attribute framing as a tactic against corporate reputation damage from the evaluations of sceptical, right-wing audiences

Purpose
The paper aims to examine whether CSR communication about a company’s support for climate change created using different content framing categories (positive vs negative) can lead climate change-sceptical audiences to positively influence their evaluations of the credibility of CSR communication, of a company and its actions, and lead to higher purchase intentions.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper used an experimental design. About 266 respondents recruited via the Prolific platform were invited to participate in an online study. A between-subject design was used, and data was analysed using the bootstrapping technique, allowing to identify moderators of the relationship between CSR communication framing and different evaluations of a company.

Findings
The paper provides empirical support for the role of political preferences and climate change beliefs in predicting the preference for positive attribute framing among climate change sceptical audiences. It is argued that climate change sceptics are still in the process of deliberation about whether climate change is occurring.

Research limitations/implications
The research findings may not be generalizable to countries where support for climate change is low, and a technique like attribute framing may not lead to noticeable differences in message reception.

Practical implications
The paper underscores the impact of the type of attribute framing in CSR communication on different aspects of company evaluations depending on beliefs in climate change. Commercial communicators should additionally invest in climate change education to address the climate change challenge.

Social implications
Addressing climate change effectively requires support from companies to communicate their CSR efforts purposefully and to address climate change sceptical audiences.

Originality/value
The paper identifies beliefs in climate change as an important moderator of CSR communication attribute framing effectiveness.