Three studies provided initial laboratory tests of the effectiveness of a novel form of community-based environmental messaging intended to be deployed on public digital signs.  In all studies, adult participants watched a slideshow of “Community Voices,” a display that combines community images and quotes to celebrate and empower pro-environmental and pro-community thought and action.  In addition to assessing the general efficacy of the approach, a central goal was to assess the impact of alternative messengers by comparing identical text associated with either adult or child messengers (Studies 1, 2, and 3).  We also assessed the impact of alternative framing of the message itself by comparing: injunctive vs non-injunctive wording (Study 1), political vs non-political content (Study 1), and future vs. present-oriented framing (Study 2).  Studies 1 and 2 were conducted on a national sample.  In addition, to assess the impact of local vs. non-local messengers, Study 3 compared the response of a non-local sample to a local population in which subjects had personal connections with the people and places featured in the message content. Exposure to Community Voices messages resulted in significant increases in social norm perception, concern about environmental issues, commitment to action, and optimism, suggesting that this approach to messaging is potentially valuable for stimulating cultural change.  However, messages attributed to child messengers were generally not more effective, and in some cases were less effective than the same message attributed to adults.  We also found no significant difference in the impact of the alternative message frames studied.

Messaging, survey items, operational definitions, reliabilities.  This word file provides operational definitions and survey items for the analyses reported in manuscript PONE-D-20-17314.  Variable names used in the data files appear in brackets after the descriptive name.

Study1_DataMetadata.xlsx, Study2_DataMetadata.xlsx, and Study3_DataMetadata.xlsx.  These excel files contain the raw data used in the analyses.  The second sheet contains metadata defining all variable names and value labels.

Study1_Data.sav, Study2_Data.sav, and Study3_Data.sav.  These SPSS files contain the raw data used in the analyses, as well as variable names and value labels.

Study1_SPSS_Syntax.pdf, Study2_SPSS_Syntax.pdf, and Study3_SPSS_Syntax.pdf.  These files contain the SPSS syntax for analyses reported in manuscript PONE-D-20-17314 and supplemental materials.