Moderate Versus Radical NGOs †.

Summary NGOs often vary in terms of how radical they are. In this paper, we explore the effec-tiveness of NGO discourses in bringing about social change. We focus on animal advocacy:welfarist NGOs primarily seek to improve the conditions in which animals are raised and re-duce meat consumption, while abolitionist NGOs categorically reject animal use and call fora vegan society. We design an experiment to study the respective impact of welfarist and abo-litionist discourses on participants’ beliefs regarding pro-meat justifications and their actions,namely their propensity to engage in the short-run in animal welfare (charity donation, peti-tion against intensive farming) and plant-based diets (subscription to a newsletter promotingplant-based diets, petition supporting vegetarian meals). We first show that both welfarist andabolitionist discourses significantly undermine participants’ pro-meat justifications. Second,the welfarist discourse does not significantly affect participants’ actions, while we detect a po-tential backlash effect of the abolitionist discourse. We show that the NGOs’ positive standardeffect on actions through the change in beliefs is outweighed by a negative behavioral responseto the discourses (reactance effect). Last, greater public-good contributions are associated withgreater engagement in animal welfare in the presence of an NGO discourse.