What About the Children? The Effectiveness of Including Children in Environmental Appeals

Despite many environmental campaigns putting children front and center, the effectiveness of including children in environmental appeals has not been tested. Across four online experiments (N=2,200), participants saw either an existing Friends of the Earth appeal or matching appeals that made children salient. All experiments assessed real donations to Friends of the Earth as a behavioral outcome measure. The results showed that making children salient elicited lower donations relative to the standard Friends of the Earth appeal, and this effect was partially explained by lower persuasiveness of arguments in the campaign text (despite the arguments being identical between conditions). The findings suggest that the inclusion of children in appeals can backfire, with important ramifications for environmental campaigning.