Bringing Climate Change Science to the Landscape Level: Canadian Experience in Using Landscape Visualisation Within Participatory Processes for Community Planning - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 127

7.3.2.4 Emotions
The analysis of the pre and post questionnaires suggest that, despite a fairly high
prior knowledge of global climate change, many respondents' concern about the
effects of climate change significantly increased. Many respondents noted that
having information locally contextualized and visualized in alternative futures
made the climate change information ''hit home''.
7.3.2.5 Motivation and Behaviour
Results show a significant increase among respondents in the belief that action
taken can significantly reduce the impacts of climate change in the future. The
visioning material increased stated motivations for behaviour change and altered
community participants' attitudes. There was a significant increase in the number
of respondents who personally plan to do something about climate change.
Analysis of comments revealed that the majority focused on changes to personal
auto use (e.g. use car less, walk/bike, use public transport, carpool, buy a hybrid)
and the household (e.g. changing light bulbs, using less energy, upgrading appli-
ances), rather than collective responses such as voting with an emphasis on a
climate change platform or joining a community group. Willingness to support
climate change policies (both mitigation and adaptation) at the local scale
increased substantially. One participant from Delta's Environment Committee
called the sessions ''empowering''.
This exploratory research thus offers compelling evidence to support the use of
alternative climate change scenarios, downscaled climate information, and geo-
matics-based visualization techniques to generate significant cognitive and affec-
tive responses in community participants, and increase policy support on climate
change action. It is difficult to disentangle the effects on participants of the visu-
alisations from those effects arising from the overall participatory process. In a
control group of Delta residents who were exposed to the visioning presentation
without landscape visualisation but with otherwise similar content, many
responses trended in the same direction as those of participants seeing the full
presentation, but support for mitigation and adaptation policies was stronger with
those seeing the visualisations (Sheppard 2012 ); engagement and interest levels
appeared higher with visualisations also. In subsequent interviews with practitio-
ners involved in the process, the majority of images most vividly recalled were
landscape visualisations (Burch et al. 2010 ).
Broadly similar results from the full visioning process were obtained with both
members of the public and practitioners (Tatebe et al. 2010 ). However, the self-
selected nature of the citizen participation may mean that these participants rep-
resented an ''interest'' sample, and the incidence of recent climate change-related
events (e.g. flooding in Delta in 2006) may help explain the fairly high levels of
awareness on climate change. Accordingly, it cannot be assumed that other types
of community would react similarly.