Credibility, communication, and climate change: How lifestyle inconsistency and do-gooder derogation impact decarbonization advocacy

Abstract The present research examines two distinct pitfalls for advocates aiming to motivate others to use renewable energy and reduce their carbon footprint. Recent research has found that science communicators and advocates may be judged for inconsistency between their behavior and advocacy—where information that an advocate's lifestyle has a large carbon footprint can undermine their appeals to live more sustainably or support policies to address climate change. Conversely, in other advocacy domains, research on do-gooder derogation has found that exemplary behavior among advocates can lead people to feel defensive about their own shortcomings and reject the exemplar and their cause. Do environmental advocates have to worry about both do-gooder derogation and behavior-advocacy inconsistency? Further, do different types of advocates have to worry about these pitfalls equally? To answer these questions, we use an online survey in the United States (N = 2362) to contrast the effectiveness of advocacy from peers and from experts across three levels of sustainable lifestyles: not sustainable, somewhat sustainable, and highly sustainable. We find strong evidence for the negative effects of behavior-advocacy inconsistency for both neighbors and experts, albeit much larger impacts for experts. Further, we also find partial evidence for do-gooder derogation for neighbors and experts: highly sustainable advocates were not more influential than somewhat sustainable ones—instead they were marginally worse. Overall, these results suggest that advocates, especially experts, are most credible and influential when they adopt many sustainable behaviors in their day-to-day lives, so long as they are not seen as too extreme.