Effects of opinion statements on laypeople's acceptance of a climate engineering technology. Comparing the source credibility of researchers, politicians and a citizens' jury

To examine the influence of different actors' fictitious statements about research and deployment stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), we conducted an online survey in Germany. Participants assess researchers a citizens' jury to be more credible than politicians. Credibility has strong positive effect on SAI acceptance both pro-SAI contra-SAI conditions. Reading statement against SAI-deployment led significantly lower scores compared reading pro-statement. However, difference between messages was unexpectedly small, indicating that message content not fully adopted while underlying traits attitudes mainly shaped even despite, or because of, low levels knowledge.