The Target of a Protest: Are Extreme Protests Perceived More Negatively When the Target Is Deemed Undeserving?

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Abstract

Factions of the climate movement sometimes advocate for escalating their tactics, and engage in disruptive mass civil disobedience in the effort to pressure governments to act on anthropogenic climate change. However, this disruptive action can often affect the general public, or other entities not directly responsible for the issue. Previous research on “the activist's dilemma” has demonstrated that extreme protest actions can erode public support for a movement (Feinberg et al., 2020). The present research proposes that this impact could be intensified when the protest behaviour affects people who are deemed as undeserving. Participants (N = 367) based in the United Kingdom (UK) were presented with a mock BBC news article about a climate protest. The protest behaviour was manipulated to be either moderate or extreme and the protest target was manipulated to be either deserving (i.e., a fossil fuel corporation and its staff) or undeserving (i.e., a shopping centre and the general public). Findings demonstrated that when the protest target was undeserving, participants perceived the protest behaviour to be more immoral, felt less emotional connection and social identification with the activists, and supported the movement less, compared to when the protest target was deserving. The protest target also moderated the effect of protest extremity, such that extreme protests were considered more immoral than moderate protests, and this effect was amplified when the protest target was undeserving. These findings suggest that climate protests which target the general public—or any entity perceived as undeserving of being affected by a protest—will be perceived more negatively and lead to lower support for the climate movement than protests which target those deemed more directly responsible for the issue of climate change.

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