1. Describe the essence of the theory:
The future of our environment is in jeopardy and at the rate the world is going it will not be long before we have little or nothing left of it due to human action (Oskamp, 2000a). It is for this reason why it is so important that actions are taken and one possible way to start is to target business organisations. Through risk communication/ framing theory of social psychology messages about our current environmental situation could be communicated to these organisations in order to attempt to appropriately frame messages in a way that will help change their behaviours. Industries and organisations are one of the top consumers of energy and create a large amount of waste on a day to day basis because they are so large and there are so many of them (infoplease, 2008). It is easy to forget about what is right and wrong for both the environment and ourselves, letting our actions go unnoticed. It is especially easy when we believe it is not our problem, but it will be soon so this needs to change. This theory involves the use of either negative or positive framed messages in order to try and encourage or discourage certain behaviours and attitudes towards behaviours. Business organisations have a vast amount of potential in helping the fight against climate change as they have the numbers to target a huge amount of the population and there are many of them and high amounts of people work at them, commuting to them each and every day. It is possible that through the appropriate framing of messages about climate change people at these organisations may change their attitudes and behaviours towards it and therefore help contribute to fighting it. There are several ideas about the framing of messages and Lee and Aaker (2004) state that if people perceive a risk to be low then the message should be positively framed in a good light (gain frame) and is better for promotional messages. On the other hand if perceived risk is high and...