Making activists out of environmentalists: new experimental evidence

ABSTRACT

Among the many goals of advocacy organizations is motivating supporters to engage in actions that help move forward the policy goals of the group. This might include signing a petition, sending an email to an elected official, or attending a local government meeting. These actions are important for the maintenance of democracy, but also very rare; most people are not activists. How best to encourage supporters to engage in that necessary advocacy has thus been the topic of extensive political science research. We present results from a series of A/B experiments sent by a local environmental advocacy organization seeking to increase higher order levels of participation among their supporters. We find consistent evidence that framing those messages in negative terms (e.g., stop dirty energy) is more effective than framing them positively (e.g., promote clean energy).

KEYWORDS:

• Message framing
• activist
• participation
• environment

Acknowledgments

Our thanks to the staff of Washington Environmental Council for their help conducting these field experiments. All errors remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.