Social and environmental campaigning is plagued by the law of unintended consequences. As Common Cause has long highlighted, campaigns and communications intended to elicit deeper expressions of social or environmental concern also influence attitudes and behaviours in seemingly unrelated domains. For example, some communications urging uptake of one environment-friendly behaviour may undermine commitment to another such behaviour – with counterproductive effects for environmental campaigning. But such consequences may also extend to seemingly unrelated causes: for example, our own research has shown how some communications about biodiversity loss can erode support for progress on disability rights. 

Although such negative unintended consequences may be very important, there are many reasons why it’s attractive to simply ignore the challenges that these throw up:

• First, such unintended consequences may be myriad – where do you focus resources in trying to assess them? Working for a biodiversity conservation organisation, your work may impact public concern about disability rights – but what about homelessness, or immigration, or public health issues? How widely should you cast the net in looking for such impacts? And can it really be practical to take such diverse impacts into account?
• Second, there may be legal constraints. If you work for a charity focused on mitigating the biodiversity crisis, you may not have the legal scope to devote resources to assessing the impacts of your campaigns on other causes that fall beyond your charitable objectives. 
• Third, you may experience pressure – real or imagined – from your supporters (people who participate in your campaigns, or individual donors). Will these people be tolerant of you expending resources in assessing the impact of your work on causes that seem far removed from your core focus? 
• Fourth, you may experience constraints from large donors. Will a foundation which supports you to conduct a conservation project be tolerant of you spending some of their money to assess the impacts of this campaign on other, perhaps very different, causes? 

Given these pressures and constraints, it’s little wonder that most campaigners and communicators would prefer to make what progress they are able on the specific issues upon which they focus, while remaining oblivious to the possible wider impacts of their work. But, as this blog outlines, evidence of the significance of these negative unintended consequences continues to accumulate, such that working away on our specific campaigns without pausing to ask how these intersect with others seems increasingly untenable. 

Perhaps what is needed is a rule-of-thumb: an approach which is likely, on balance, to lead to optimal outcomes across multiple causes. Based on our work with social psychologists, now over nearly two decades, we have advocated such a rule: centre intrinsic values (that is, values of community, social justice, helpfulness, honesty, equality and environmental care) in your campaigns and communications and avoid extrinsic values (that is, values of financial success, public image, social status or power over others). We do not argue that following this rule of thumb will serve to maximise positive outcomes, across diverse causes, in all possible circumstances; but we do argue that it is likely to lead to significantly better outcomes than those achieved by approaches that remain oblivious to wider impacts.

Our case for advocating this rule-of-thumb is built on research in social science. But social science is a messy business: Results obtained in one lab must be replicated – by other researchers, and in different contexts; and those results that contradict an emerging pattern need to be explored and discussed. The weight of evidence needed to support advocacy of a general principle only emerges over time. 

What light does recent research shed on Common Cause’s advocacy for the benefits of appealing to intrinsic values in designing specific social or environmental communications and campaigns? 

Most social science research on motivating public expressions of social or environmental concern focuses on the effectiveness of interventions which target specific attitudes or behaviours, or which seek to build public support for specific policy interventions. Far fewer studies explore the impacts of an intervention on other attitudes or behaviours which are not specifically targeted – particularly where these attitudes or behaviours relate to completely different causes to those that are targeted.

There is, however, a small but growing literature on “behavioural spillover effects”, mainly in the area of “pro-environmental behaviours” (PEBs), like recycling, buying eco-friendly products, walking or cycling instead of using a car etc. Some of this research explores the ways in which different kinds of motivation for adopting one PEB improves (or diminishes) the likelihood of a person then moving on to embrace other PEBs which are not specifically targeted. Working with an internationally leading expert on spillover, John Thorgersen, we published a report on this back in 2009 which made the case that intrinsic motivation for adopting a target PEB will likely promote positive spillover to other environmentally-relevant attitudes and behaviours.

Several studies since then have corroborated this perspective. Here’s one example: Psychologist Julia Steinhorst and colleagues examined the effects of appealing to different motivations for energy-efficiency savings on people’s subsequent commitment to other climate-friendly intentions (e.g., foregoing red meat or supporting a climate protection project). They presented some people with an extrinsic motivation for saving electricity (“Electricity saving positively affects your household budget!” – priming the extrinsic value of wealth) and some with an intrinsic, environmental reason (“Electricity saving positively affects the future of humans and nature!” – priming intrinsic values of social justice and care for nature.) They found that:

“[P]ositive spillover on climate-friendly intentions, beyond the realm of saving electricity, was found in the environmental framing condition only.” .

Leading them to conclude that:

“Our results emphasise the risks of appealing to monetary reasons or self-interest when promoting environmental behaviour.”

But what is the overall trajectory of research on such spillover effects? In 2019, Alexander Maki and colleagues conducted a “meta-analysis” of 25 different studies examining spillover between different PEBs.

They grouped these studies according to different kinds of outcome measure (participants’ stated intentions to adopt other pro-environmental behaviours, their observed or self-reported behaviour, and their support for policy changes). Though targeting intrinsic motivations led to more positive spillover in the case of each outcome measure, this only reached statistical significance for intentions to adopt pro-environmental behaviours. Conversely, targeting extrinsic motivations tended to limit spillover. 

While these results clearly add further weight to our recommendation that campaigners and communicators centre intrinsic motivations, we agree with the authors’ perhaps inevitable conclusion that more research is needed. 

Research published this month in the journal Sustainable Production and Consumption, Jessika Luth Richter and others take a different approach. First, and unlike many previous studies which focus on relatively insignificant pro-environmental behaviours, they focused on “high impact” behavioural changes – giving up meat, giving up one’s car, stopping flying and reducing living space. Second, their approach was qualitative: they interviewed people who had taken these steps about their motivations and the possible implications for other environmentally-relevant behaviours. Based on data collected over the course of day-long workshops with participants in five countries, the authors conclude that “[i]n particular, intrinsic motivations emerged as strong explanatory factors for behaviour change and avoidance of negative indirect effects”. 

Readers looking for unqualified support for framing campaigns to engage intrinsic motivations, as a route to promoting expressions of concern across areas of social or environmental concern will, quite rightly, be left wanting more. 

But many campaigners and communicators – especially those who are aware of the difficulty of applying the results of complex social science research to the practice of campaigning and communicating – will see here further support for a precautionary approach: one that centres appeals to intrinsic motivations and that avoids appeal to extrinsic motivations.

Cover Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash