Espinosa, Romain and Treich, Nicolas (2020) Moderate vs. Radical NGOs. TSE Working Paper, n. 20-1159, Toulouse

Preview

Text Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

NGOs often vary in terms of how radical they are. In this paper, we explore the
effectiveness of NGO discourses in bringing about social change. We focus on animal
advocacy: welfarist NGOs primarily seek to improve the conditions in which animals
are raised and reduce meat consumption, while abolitionist NGOs categorically reject
animal use and call for a vegan society. We design an experiment to study the
respective impact of welfarist and abolitionist discourses on participants’ beliefs regarding
pro-meat justifications and their actions, namely their propensity to engage in
the short-run in animal welfare (charity donation, petition against intensive farming)
and plant-based diets (subscription to a newsletter promoting plant-based diets, petition
supporting vegetarian meals). We first show that both welfarist and abolitionist
discourses significantly undermine participants’ pro-meat justifications. Second, the
welfarist discourse does not significantly affect participants’ actions, while we detect a
potential backlash effect of the abolitionist discourse. We show that the NGOs’ positive
standard effect on actions through the change in beliefs is outweighed by a negative
behavioral response to the discourses (reactance effect). Last, greater public-good contributions
are associated with greater engagement in animal welfare in the presence of
an NGO discourse.