What about the children? The effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals

Lukas J.  Wolf; Marina Iosifian; Colin  Foad; Geoff Haddock; Gregory Maio

doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102195

What about the children? The effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals

Lukas J. Wolf^*, Marina Iosifian, Colin Foad, Geoff Haddock, Gregory Maio

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Divinity

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Despite many environmental campaigns putting children front and center, the effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals has not been tested. Across four online experiments (N = 2,200), participants saw either an existing Friends of the Earth appeal or matching appeals that made children salient. All experiments assessed real donations to Friends of the Earth as a behavioral outcome measure. The results showed that making children salient elicited lower donations relative to the standard Friends of the Earth appeal, and this effect was partially explained by lower persuasiveness of arguments in the campaign text (despite the arguments being identical between conditions). The findings suggest that the inclusion of children in appeals can backfire, with important ramifications for environmental campaigning.

Original language	English
Article number	102195
Number of pages	10
Journal	Journal of Environmental Psychology
Volume	94
Early online date	17 Feb 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102195
Publication status	Published - 1 Mar 2024

Keywords

Donation behaviour
Charity
Persuasion
Children
Environmental campaign
Communication

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Wolf_2024_JoEP_What-about-children-effectiveness_CC
Copyright © 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Cite this

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title = "What about the children? The effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals",

abstract = "Despite many environmental campaigns putting children front and center, the effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals has not been tested. Across four online experiments (N = 2,200), participants saw either an existing Friends of the Earth appeal or matching appeals that made children salient. All experiments assessed real donations to Friends of the Earth as a behavioral outcome measure. The results showed that making children salient elicited lower donations relative to the standard Friends of the Earth appeal, and this effect was partially explained by lower persuasiveness of arguments in the campaign text (despite the arguments being identical between conditions). The findings suggest that the inclusion of children in appeals can backfire, with important ramifications for environmental campaigning.",

keywords = "Donation behaviour, Charity, Persuasion, Children, Environmental campaign, Communication",

author = "Wolf, {Lukas J.} and Marina Iosifian and Colin Foad and Geoff Haddock and Gregory Maio",

note = "Funding: This project was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under grant agreement ES/P002463/1.",

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doi = "10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102195",

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T1 - What about the children? The effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals

AU - Wolf, Lukas J.

AU - Iosifian, Marina

AU - Foad, Colin

AU - Haddock, Geoff

AU - Maio, Gregory

N1 - Funding: This project was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under grant agreement ES/P002463/1.

PY - 2024/3/1

Y1 - 2024/3/1

N2 - Despite many environmental campaigns putting children front and center, the effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals has not been tested. Across four online experiments (N = 2,200), participants saw either an existing Friends of the Earth appeal or matching appeals that made children salient. All experiments assessed real donations to Friends of the Earth as a behavioral outcome measure. The results showed that making children salient elicited lower donations relative to the standard Friends of the Earth appeal, and this effect was partially explained by lower persuasiveness of arguments in the campaign text (despite the arguments being identical between conditions). The findings suggest that the inclusion of children in appeals can backfire, with important ramifications for environmental campaigning.

AB - Despite many environmental campaigns putting children front and center, the effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals has not been tested. Across four online experiments (N = 2,200), participants saw either an existing Friends of the Earth appeal or matching appeals that made children salient. All experiments assessed real donations to Friends of the Earth as a behavioral outcome measure. The results showed that making children salient elicited lower donations relative to the standard Friends of the Earth appeal, and this effect was partially explained by lower persuasiveness of arguments in the campaign text (despite the arguments being identical between conditions). The findings suggest that the inclusion of children in appeals can backfire, with important ramifications for environmental campaigning.

KW - Donation behaviour

KW - Charity

KW - Persuasion

KW - Children

KW - Environmental campaign

KW - Communication

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DO - 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102195

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