Climax thinking on the coast: a focus group priming experiment with coastal property owners about climate adaptation

Coastal communities face increasingly difficult decisions about responses to climate change. Armoring and defending the coast are being revealed as ineffective in terms of outcomes and cost, particularly in rural areas. Nature-based options include approaches that make space for coastal dynamism (e.g., through managed retreat) or leverage ecosystem services such as erosion control (e.g., by restoring coastal wetlands). Resistance can be strong to these alternatives to hard infrastructure. Nova Scotia, off Canada’s Atlantic coast, is a vulnerable coastal jurisdiction facing such decisions. The emerging climax thinking framework was used to design 14 experimental online focus groups. These focus groups explored how three priming treatments influenced discussions about adaptation options and urgency and quantitative pre/post-tests, compared with information-only control treatments. A future-focused priming strategy seemed most effective since it fostered discussions about duties to future generations. The altruism-focused priming strategy involved reflections of wartime mobilization and more recent collective action. It also worked but was more difficult to implement and potentially higher risk. Past-focused priming was counterproductive. Further research should test the future-focused and altruism-focused strategies among larger groups and in different jurisdictions, reducing some of the biases in our sample.