“That we are what we have … is perhaps the most basic and powerful fact of consumer behaviour” [1]. “Perhaps we boycott because we are also what we do not have” [2].
A boycott is defined as “a concerted, nonmandatory, refusal by a group of actors to conduct transactions with a certain target to communicate displeasure with its policies and coerce it to modify them” [3].
In the context of climate action, boycotts have emerged as a means of fighting big fossil fuel companies and holding them accountable for their disproportionate contributions to climate change. There has been a particular surge in campaigns for banks and insurance companies to divest in fossil fuel, such as Stop the Money Pipeline, Insure Our Future and Unfriend Coal [4].
Although boycotts have the objective of achieving a collective goal, they represent a social dilemma, where the consumer must choose between the individual satisfaction of consumption and the desire to contribute to the shared benefits of a successful boycott [5]. Under this dilemma, boycotts can be effective or ineffective depending on the level of participation that they attract [3].
Boycott participation can be explained as a cost-reward model where, first, there must be an initial trigger [2], an offending event by the target company that evokes a negative emotion (anger, frustration, anxiety, etc.) in the consumer and sparks willingness to boycott [6] (for example, the exposure of a company’s environmentally harmful practices or investments in fossil fuels). After experiencing the negative emotions, the consumer ponders the costs and benefits of boycotting, which can be categorized as [2]:
- Make a difference: benefit related to the motivation to create societal change.
- Self-enhancement: benefit of boosting the consumer’s social and personal self-esteem for doing a moral thing, and avoidance of feelings of guilt (social pressure).
- Counterarguments: cost of unintended harm resulting from the boycott or the feeling of powerlessness and insignificance of individual actions.
- Constrained consumption: cost of not consuming, the sacrifice of satisfaction by consumption.
Motivation to participate in a boycott is also enhanced or diminished by the “perceived egregiousness”, meaning how outrageous the offending event is to the consumer (linked to their personal values), and on the “perceived efficacy”, or the extent to which they believe their actions can contribute to achieving collective goals [2].
Aside from level of participation, boycott effectiveness also depends on the magnitude of economic and image (publicity) pressure posed on the target, and their policy commitment (target’s resistance to respond to coercive efforts) [3].
From the previous literature, where many reported cases have environmental protection as an underlying motivation, some communication strategies can be extrapolated to advise climate activism groups looking to organise boycotts that promote climate justice:
- Enhance “perceived egregiousness” by clearly stating the costs of the target’s policies and the benefits of the boycott
- Enhance “perceived efficacy” by highlighting how high participation levels increase the impact of the boycott
- Emphasize the benefit of societal change achieved by collective action throught the use of narratives that target positive feelings of “making a difference”
- Prepare fact-based responses to the target’s counterarguments
- Publicize the ease of participation and the availability of alternative products to reduce the conflicting feelings of the social dilemma
- Cite past cases of successful boycotts to increase consumer’s empowerment
References:
[1] Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the Extended Self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2489522
[2] Klein, J. G., Smith, N. C., & John, A. (2004). Why We Boycott: Consumer Motivations for Boycott Participation. Journal of Marketing, 68(3), 92-109. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.68.3.92.34770
[3] Garrett, D. E. (1987). The Effectiveness of Marketing Policy Boycotts: Environmental Opposition to Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 51(2), 46–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/1251128
[4] Scott, I. (2020), The Trouble with Boycotts: Can Fossil Fuel Divest Campaigns Be Prohibited?. Am Bus Law J, 57: 537-591. https://doi.org/10.1111/ablj.12168
[5] Sen, S., Gürhan‐Canli, Z., & Morwitz, V. (2001). Withholding Consumption: A Social Dilemma Perspective on Consumer Boycotts. Journal of Consumer Research, 28(3), 399–417. https://doi.org/10.1086/323729
[6] Shin S, Yoon S-W. Consumer motivation for the decision to boycott: The social dilemma. Int J Consum Stud. 2018; 42: 439–447. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12444
This is a nice poster topic. You tell a very appealing story about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of boycotts as a climate mitigation (?) tool and cite appropriate resources. I agree with Lars’ points on focusing your scope a little bit on what you appear to really want to talk about, which is the relation of boycotts to climate justice. Deriving your poster topic explicitly from the cited literature can help with that – take it as an exercise and try to derive your question from the chosen resources! Are they all helpful? Do you need different papers here and there?
The poster’s topic of how to improve the effectiveness of consumer boycotts for climate mitigation is interesting and suitable for the course task.
I am not sure if we can say that such consumer boycotts advance climate justice as is stated in your title. Is climate justice really affected by consumer boycotts? How do you define climate justice in this context? Do you need the term “climate justice” for your poster?
You have already found quite many references as background for your study, which is great. However, I would find it interesting if you could look also in literature that is sceptical about the benefits or effectiveness or unintended side-effects of such consumer boycotts. From the analysis of conflicting arguments, you could identify knowledge gaps and research questions that could be tackled by the climate science community. Your poster idea focusses now very much on improving communication about and implementation of consumer boycotts. This is great; however, it would be good to have also some links to ideas about what scientific research could still contribute.