You Must Eat Less Meat! Effects of Issue Importance on Reactance to Meat-Reduction Messages

Meat reduction has a strong potential to reduce individual greenhouse gas emissions, so a better understanding of how the public responds to meat-reduction messages is needed. The present study investigated whether emphasizing the importance of climate change would mitigate the negative effects of forceful meat-reduction messages on intentions and policy support through reactance. A total of 502 U.S. residents viewed a forceful or a nonforceful meat reduction message accompanied by a video emphasizing the importance of climate change or not, then completed measures of intentions, policy support, reactance, perceived threat to freedom, and issue importance. Path analyses showed that when no video was present, the forceful (vs. nonforceful) message activated the indirect pathway to compliance intentions and policy support through increasing reactance. However, the presence of the video neutralized these indirect pathways, suggesting that emphasizing the importance of climate change can reduce defensive processing of meat-reduction messages and negative downstream effects.