Moderate vs. Radical NGOs

Romain Espinosa and Nicolas Treich

No 20-1159, TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

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.

Keywords: moderate, radical, NGO, welfarist, abolitionist, animal-welfare, plant-based; diets, behavioral economics, experimental economics, reactance. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D71 Q18 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Moderate vs. Radical NGOs (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tse:wpaper:124875

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