How do different protest tactics and messaging strategies affect attitudes towards animals (Social Change Lab)

Our results confirm our previous polling results in showing that, in the short term, disruptive animal rights protests may have negative impacts. These extend to people’s attitudes towards animals, their support for changing how we treat animals in society, and their willingness to do something about it. However, we recently published new research which suggests that the initial backlash effects due to disruptive animal rights protests do not last. This means that the effects obtained in the present study should not be taken to mean that real-world protests using the campaign types and messaging strategies we tested would alter public opinion long-term commensurate with the effects we saw here. Such effects appear to be temporary and it is not yet known just how long vs. short-lived they are. However, the differences between conditions provide interesting insights into which kinds of protest tactics and messages can be more or less persuasive for people. Moreover, it appears likely that consistently utilising more vs. less favourable campaigns/messages could have a compounding effect that really matters. Especially in times of frequent protest activity, it seems possible that negative effects due to less effective protest types (such as KFC drive-thru blockades) or messaging strategies (such as solution-led messaging) could compound over time. This possibility seems particularly relevant because for the present study we pre-selected participants (N=4757) who showed above-average concern for animals. Thus, we would have likely seen more strongly negative effects with a representative sample. We hope this research provides useful insights to anyone working in animal advocacy about which messaging strategies and protest tactics might be most useful to pursue in shifting the dial on public opinion towards animal rights.