Nature documentaries are an entertaining and informative genre that appears well-suited to environmental communication. However, producers of nature documentaries face a dilemma: Although they aim to inspire their audiences to act pro-environmentally, they fear ruining viewers’ entertainment experience if they address environmental destruction. Hence, conventional nature documentaries solely portray pristine nature. In contrast, recent nature documentaries have adopted a dual-message strategy by showing beautiful nature footage while also addressing conservation issues. We investigated how these dual-message nature documentaries affect viewers’ hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment experiences and their pro-environmental behavior intentions compared with conventional nature documentaries. We integrated theoretical accounts from entertainment research and environmental psychology and tested our assumptions in three online experiments (total N = 1,362). Our findings suggest that dual-message nature documentaries evoke weaker hedonic experiences than conventional documentaries but stronger eudaimonic experiences (i.e., mixed affect and reflection) that mediate the effect of dual-message documentaries on pro-environmental intentions.

中文翻译：

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将自然描绘成令人惊叹和受到威胁的双重信息自然纪录片如何影响娱乐体验和环保意图

自然纪录片是一种有趣且信息丰富的类型，似乎非常适合环境传播。然而，自然纪录片的制片人面临着一个困境：虽然他们的目标是激励观众采取环保行动，但他们担心如果解决环境破坏问题，就会破坏观众的娱乐体验。因此，传统的自然纪录片只描绘原始自然。相比之下，最近的自然纪录片采取了双重信息策略，展示美丽的自然镜头，同时也解决保护问题。我们研究了与传统自然纪录片相比，这些双重信息自然纪录片如何影响观众的享乐和幸福娱乐体验以及他们的环保行为意图。我们整合了娱乐研究和环境心理学的理论解释，并在三个在线实验中测试了我们的假设（总计 N = 1,362）。我们的研究结果表明，双信息自然纪录片比传统纪录片唤起的享乐体验更弱，但产生更强的幸福体验（即混合情感和反思），从而调节双信息纪录片对环保意图的影响。