Varieties of Climate Activism: Assessing Public Support for Mainstream and Unorthodox Climate Action

Events

Varieties of Climate Activism: Assessing Public Support for Mainstream and Unorthodox Climate Action

Monday, April 15, 2024

12:00pm – 1:00pm

Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street

Professor Aseem Prakash discusses his research on public attitudes towards disruptive forms of environmental activism in the UK.

Abstract

Does the public of the United Kingdom support environmental organizations that adopt disruptive tactics (museum and art gallery protests, sporting event disruptions, and traffic stoppages), as opposed to orthodox tactics (litigation, lobbying, and research and education)? Using a conjoint choice experiment (N = 1,023), we asked respondents’ willingness to donate £25 to hypothetical environmental organizations that differ in terms of (1) advocacy tactics, (2), devoting funds to administrative overheads, (3), the share of women on their boards, (4) organizational age, (5) organizational size, (6) weekly volunteers, and (7) the share of the revenue from citizen donations. We find that respondents’ willingness to donate diminishes when organizations adopt disruptive tactics. These results hold across party preferences, ideology, generation, location, and environmental policy attitudes. Further, respondents support organizations that rely on grassroots donations, have low overheads, are supported by volunteers, and provide representation to women on their boards.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Aseem Prakash is Professor of Political Science, the Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Founding Director of the Center for Environmental Politics at University of Washington, Seattle. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He has served as an International Research Fellow at the Center for Corporate Reputation, University of Oxford and on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Environmental Change and Society. He is the founding editor of the Cambridge University Press Series in Business and Public Policy as well as the Cambridge Elements in Organizational Response to Climate Change. His recent awards include the American Political Science Association’s 2020 Elinor Ostrom Career Achievement Award, the International Studies Association’s 2019 Distinguished International Political Economy Scholar Award and the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Regulatory Governance’s 2018 Regulatory Studies Development Award that recognizes a senior scholar who has made notable “contributions to the field of regulatory governance. In terms of public scholarship. He has published over 170 commentaries and has a byline with Nives Dolsak on Forbes.com.