Last week, Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell called upon industry to provide better information to the public about the fracking process. She said the public debate is “confused” and “not well-informed,” stating that industry is responsible for making sure “that the public understand what it is, how it’s done, and why it’s safe.” Industry has also admitted the need to “raise the public’s comfort level,” especially in states like Colorado where three cities recently approved bans or moratoriums on hydraulic fracturing. Providing information is important, but isn’t simple or easy. New RFF research shows that industry will need to provide not just more information, but better information if it is to improve public confidence.
Juha Siikamaki and I recently completed a survey of the general public in Pennsylvania and Texas to examine how different kinds of information impact their willingness to support shale gas development in their state. We did this by first asking the survey participants about their level of support or opposition. Then we randomly gave them one of three different information treatments that described shale gas development: one from the American Petroleum Institute website, another from NGO websites, and a third that took a “rational middle” approach. After they read the information, we asked them again about their level of support or opposition to shale gas development. Between 50 and 60 percent of the respondents’ views were unchanged. For the rest, the action was mostly among those who initially supported development. The NGO information was very good at moving supporters towards indifference, and the industry information actually worked perversely—moving more people towards indifference and opposition than towards stronger support. On the other hand, the industry and NGO information descriptions were equally effective in moving indifferent respondents to support or oppose shale gas development, respectively. And the industry information’s attempt at winning over those who were opposed was not effective.
In short, environmental messages appear consistently more effective at reducing support for shale development than industry messages are at maintaining or increasing that support.
Our next step is to figure out whether people who changed their mind from being supportive are different than those who didn’t change their minds (i.e. differences between genders, political parties, knowledge about fracking, etc.). One preliminary but hopeful sign for industry is that people who say they know a lot about fracking are more likely to not change their minds than people who know little. So, just educating the public may be a winning strategy in the long-run. While our work can begin to target whom to reach, our work says nothing about exactly what the messages should be. Ultimately, improving trust will be—and should be—based on industry actions, including better environmental stewardship and greater disclosure, not just marketing messages.
