Curvilinear relationship between climate advocates’ word-deed consistency and public willingness to follow

Abstract

Climate advocacy serves as an effective strategy for encouraging the public to engage in climate actions. However, the consistency between climate advocates’ words and deeds influences the effectiveness of climate advocacy. While the facilitating effects of word-deed consistency on public willingness to follow have been extensively examined, the potential diminishing effects of high word-deed consistency remain underexplored. We conducted two preregistered studies ( N = 996) to investigate the curvilinear relationship between word-deed consistency and willingness to follow, along with the underlying mechanisms. Both studies revealed that when word-deed consistency increased from a low level to a moderate level, willingness to follow increased through the mediating effects of increased perceived credibility, similarity, and moral threat and decreased perceived hypocrisy. Conversely, when word-deed consistency increased from a moderate level to a high level, willingness to follow did not further improve and remained the same, potentially due to a corresponding reduction in perceived similarity. Further, increasing to high word-deed consistency sometimes led to being less influential when advocated behaviors were especially difficult. The present research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the nuanced relationship between advocates’ word-deed consistency and public willingness to follow and provides insight into effective climate advocacy. • Climate advocates’ word-deed consistency facilitated public willingness to follow when it is below a moderate level • Word-deed consistency did not further improve willingness to follow when it exceeded a moderate level • Perceived credibility, hypocrisy, similarity and moral threat mediated the effects of word-deed consistency • The effects of word-deed consistency depended on the difficulty of the advocated climate actions