Interview with Inside Climate News
Journalist Ryan Krugman from Inside Climate News recently reached out about my research article, “The Climate Activist’s Dilemma: Extreme Protests Reduce Movement Support but Raise Climate Concern and Intentions.” He was preparing a story on a recent direct action protests in New York City and San Francisco, and thought the findings from our study were particularly relevant. To inform the article, he had several of the protest organizers read the paper in advance and provide questions they were interested in asking. The final article was published here: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07082025/wells-fargo-drops-climate-commitments-protest/
Below is a full transcript of my written responses to the questions Ryan and the activists provided.
General Questions
Can you tell me how this research project came about? What inspired this research? How was it funded? What was your role? What was Michael Thai and Matthew Hornsey’s role?
To explain how this research project came about, I need to give some personal context. I was originally trained as a visual communication designer and had spent about a decade working in the creative industries. But around fifteen years ago, I somewhat left that career to focus more on environmental activism. I founded a Greenpeace activist team in my city and became involved with several other environment and social justice organisations. It was during this period that I became increasingly concerned, not just about the ecological crises we’re facing, but about how social movements could be more effective in bringing about meaningful change.
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, I have been disheartened by the insufficient action in response to the crisis from governments and institutions. This frustration led me to pursue a PhD at the University of Queensland (UQ), with the goal of better understanding psychological factors that underpin this inaction, the factors that shape public perceptions of protests, and how these perceptions influence support for social movements.
The idea for this particular project began while preparing for my Honours year at UQ. Around that time, in October 2022, the “SoupGate” protest took place: where two Just Stop Oil activists threw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and glued their hands to the wall of the National Gallery in London. The backlash to that protest was intense and immediate, and it got me thinking about the factors that might have evoked such a negative response.
I’m leading this line of research as part of my PhD at UQ, and both Matthew and Michael are supporting me as my supervisors.
The project has been funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) as part of a research program about understanding and overcoming community roadblocks to achieving net zero.
the wall at the National Gallery in London (15 October 2022). Credit: Antonio Olmos / The Guardian.
Can you describe/restate the study’s main findings?
Our research found that extreme climate protests — like blockades or defacing property with paint — can have both positive and negative effects on the public. On the one hand, people tend to see the activists behind these tactics as more immoral, feel less emotionally connected to them, and identify with them less. This leads to lower support for the specific activist group carrying out the protest. On the other hand, these same extreme actions are attention-grabbing, and we found they can actually increase people’s concern about climate change, as well as their intentions to take climate-related action themselves.
In other words, we identified a clear dilemma for climate activists: disruptive protests may successfully raise awareness and motivate some people to act, but they can also alienate the public from the activist group using those tactics. Importantly, and contrary to some concerns, we found no evidence that these extreme protests reduce support for the broader climate movement or the wider cause of climate action, only for the specific group carrying out the extreme protest.
Do you believe there has been an overall increase in extreme climate protests in the past 5 years? What about the last 10 years?
While I’m not aware of any systematic research specifically tracking extreme climate protests over the past five or ten years, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that their frequency has increased across both timescales.
For instance, a 2024 report by Oscar Berglund and colleagues shows that climate protests in general rose significantly from 2012 to 2023, with a marked increase toward the end of the last decade and continuing into the early 2020s. Similarly, Isabel Ortiz and colleagues (2022) found that global protest activity tripled between 2006 and 2020. Their research also indicates that at least 20% of these protests involved more extreme actions, such as property destruction, theft, or violence.
Given that this period coincides with the rise of groups like Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and Last Generation — all of which are known for having used disruptive tactics — it seems reasonable to infer that extreme climate protests have become more frequent during this time.
However, it’s worth noting that each of these groups has either disbanded or publicly committed to more moderate forms of protest moving forward. So, whether this trend continues will likely depend on whether new or existing groups choose to return to — or depart from — those more extreme tactics.
How does the “climate activists dilemma” compare to historical perceptions of extreme protests in other social movements? How is it similar to dilemmas faced by activists in other movements? How is it different?
The term “climate activist’s dilemma” in our title is a direct reference to the concept introduced by Feinberg and colleagues in 2020, who coined the term “activist’s dilemma.” They argued that extreme protest tactics tend to generate more media attention and awareness than moderate ones, but found that it comes at the cost of reducing public support for both the activists and their cause. Our study set out to test whether this pattern also applies to the climate movement, and we found both similarities and important differences.
In line with previous research, we found that extreme climate protests reduced support for the protest group. So, in that sense, the activist’s dilemma still holds: disruptive tactics may help gain attention, but can damage support for the groups using them.
However, what sets the climate movement apart is that — unlike in other contexts — we found no evidence that extreme tactics reduce support for the cause of the social movement. In fact, our findings suggest the opposite: exposure to extreme climate protests increased climate concern and even boosted people’s intentions to take personal action.
Why might this be? In the paper, we note that public concern about climate change has increased significantly in recent years, and climate action now enjoys broad public support — far more than some of the causes examined in previous research. So it’s possible we’re seeing a kind of “buffering effect,” where strong baseline support for the issue helps protect it from being undermined by negative reactions to protest tactics. In contrast, in smaller or newer social movements, extreme protest actions might be more likely to taint public perceptions of the issue itself. That’s why in the paper we argue that extreme tactics may work best when they’re part of a larger, mainstream movement — one that’s big enough, and diverse enough, to absorb backlash and redirect attention toward more moderate voices.
Questions based on the Wells Fargo action and activist comments towards the study
Many activists/organizers who participate in non-violent direct action protests were surprised to see that the perceived deservingness did not have a significant impact on perceptions of morality, emotional connection, or identification. The activists who participated in the Wells Fargo action choose their targets methodically and only after doing extensive research. For example, they chose Wells Fargo for last week’s action because they were the first bank to abandon key climate commitments after Trump was elected. Why do you believe perceived deservingness did not have a significant impact on other variables?
It’s encouraging to hear that the activists involved in the Wells Fargo action selected their target carefully and with a clear strategic rationale. That kind of strategic thinking reflects how seriously many in the climate movement take their responsibilities.
In our studies, we were similarly surprised to find that perceived deservingness — whether the people disrupted by a protest seemed morally “deserving” or “undeserving” — didn’t significantly shape how participants judged the protesters’ morality, or how emotionally connected to or identified with them they felt.
In the paper, we suggest a few possible explanations. One possible reason is that our manipulation of deservingness may not have created a strong enough contrast. For instance, in one condition, the protest disrupted employees at a Shell corporate office (the “deserving” target), while in another, it disrupted shoppers at a department store (the “undeserving” target). It’s possible that participants saw both groups as relatively ordinary people — not especially blameworthy or particularly innocent. If neither target stood out as clearly more or less “deserving,” then this may explain why deservingness didn’t significantly shape people’s reactions.
Another possibility is that some participants may not have accepted the premise that climate change is caused by human activities. If someone doesn’t believe that fossil fuel companies bear responsibility for the climate crisis, then disrupting a Shell office may not seem more justified than disrupting a department store. That belief — or lack thereof — could blunt the intended effect of the deservingness manipulation. We’re continuing to explore this in our ongoing research.
Many activists/organizers stated that they believed the impact of the “climate activists dilemma” can be mitigated through community building events — such as mutual aid, movie screenings, picnics, happy hours and more — or by participating in a wide variety of protests from mild to extreme protests. Has your research looked at these tactics? What has your research revealed on this topic? Do you believe that these methods may be valuable in limiting negative perceptions towards extreme protests and the activist’s group as a whole?
While my own research hasn’t specifically investigated whether community-building efforts or the use of a range of tactics can mitigate the negative effects of extreme protest, these are important questions. Ones that, to my knowledge, haven’t been directly tested in the academic literature.
That said, my intuition — based on both my research and my experience as an activist — is that these methods could help reduce backlash among those who already have a strong relationship with the activist group. But for broader audiences, such efforts may have limited reach, especially when people only encounter the group through media coverage of more extreme actions.
Still, I think community-building tactics like mutual aid, movie nights, or local events are invaluable. They provide low-barrier ways for people to engage with climate issues and get to know the movement on more personal and human terms. These types of events can help foster trust, and that trust can provide the foundation for understanding when a group engages in more confrontational forms of protest.
Although, it may be most effective to have a substantial record of relational, community-based engagement before escalating to more disruptive tactics, especially if you want people to stay on board. This approach aligns with what I’ve seen in practice. For instance, in Australia, the organization Lock the Gate used a grassroots community organising model to build resistance to coal and gas mining. They started with low-barrier outreach such as market stalls, community meetings, door-knocking, kitchen-table conversations, and encouraged residents to display “Lock the Gate” signs on their properties as a visible show of support. Only once the campaign had built broad local backing did they escalate to more disruptive tactics, such as blockading property entrances with lock-on devices to physically prevent fossil fuel companies from accessing land. By the time these more confrontational actions took place, they were backed by a strong, unified community base.
Similarly, I was involved in establishing Market Forces, an organization focused on shifting finance away from fossil fuels. In the early days, our approach centered on relatively moderate tactics aimed at raising public awareness of the big banks’ fossil fuel lending practices. We worked to build a base of community support that enabled us to organize “Divestment Days,” where customers of major banks would publicly close their accounts in protest. While these actions weren’t visually extreme, they created disruption where it mattered to the banks: by losing customers and withdrawing funds, and generating critical media coverage. The atmosphere at these events was often light-hearted and community-driven, but the impact was tangible. These early efforts laid important groundwork for later wins, including commitments from banks to align their lending with the Paris Agreement and reduce their exposure to fossil fuels.
To sum up, while more empirical research is needed, both activist wisdom and my own experience suggest that community-building and moderate protest can play a crucial role in legitimizing a movement and buffering against backlash. These tactics can build a base of support, deepen trust, and create the kind of social infrastructure needed for riskier or more confrontational protest actions to be received with greater understanding, even if not universal approval.
One organizer stated that they thought the use of news clippings as a prompt in the study may have influenced participants’ perceptions towards an extreme protest. Specifically, they thought that mainstream media’s reporting of climate protests may be biased, and skew participants’ perceptions towards immortality and away from identifying with participants. What is your response to this critique? More broadly, what role do you believe the media plays in shaping public perceptions of extreme protests?
That’s a thoughtful critique, and it’s true that media framing can significantly shape public perceptions of protest. Research on the “protest paradigm” has shown that mainstream media often delegitimises protests by emphasising disruption or conflict over the underlying issues. So it’s fair to be cautious about how media narratives might influence people’s views.
However, our studies used a controlled experimental design to isolate the effects of protest tactics themselves. Participants were randomly assigned to read short, news-style descriptions of moderate or extreme protests, matched closely in tone and structure, except for the protest tactic being tested. This allowed us to directly test how the tactic influenced perceptions like movement support or moral judgment, independent of other factors such as media influence.
Of course, no experiment can entirely separate people from their broader media environment, but this kind of design gives us a much clearer sense of causality than real-world observations alone. It helps us understand how different protest actions are likely to be received, even in a media landscape where bias exists.
One organizer stated, “this is the exact type of research we need right now.” What does future research look like on this topic? What are the plans for the research team that produced this study?
Thank you, it’s really encouraging to hear that kind of response. We agree that more research is urgently needed to help movements understand how different protest tactics are perceived, and under what conditions they are most effective. Especially given the pressing need to respond to the ecological crises and other pressing social issues.
One direction we’re currently pursuing builds on a factor we examined in this paper but found limited evidence for. That is, protest target deservingness: whether the institution or individual affected by a protest is perceived as deserving of protest. While we didn’t find effects on movement support or most other related outcomes in these studies, we’re now developing follow-up experiments with refined manipulations to more precisely test how this factor might influence public responses.
More broadly, I’m interested in understanding not just whether protest tactics work, but what specific attributes of a protest make it more likely to achieve outcomes that contribute to meaningful social change. I hope this research can support organisers in making more informed, strategic decisions about how they design protest actions.
Any additional comments about the study that you would like me to know? Any additional comments on the Wells Fargo Action?
Thanks for the opportunity to share more.
One of the main takeaways from my research is that protest tactics can produce a real trade-off: while extreme or disruptive actions can increase public concern about climate change, they also tend to reduce public support for the movement itself. This dynamic — what we call the climate activist’s dilemma — poses a strategic challenge for organisers, especially in campaigns like the Wells Fargo protests, which are deliberately provocative.
That said, extreme actions often serve broader purposes beyond just persuasion. They can help draw media attention, signal urgency, and galvanise movement actors. In this case, the Wells Fargo action highlights not only the bank’s backtracking on climate commitments, but also connects climate justice with other intersecting struggles, like Indigenous sovereignty and opposition to authoritarianism. These are important messages that might not break through via more conventional means.
I think these protests raise legitimate and urgent concerns about corporate accountability — especially given the scale of Wells Fargo’s fossil fuel financing and the timing of its retreat from climate and DEI commitments. Even if some find the tactics confrontational, it’s hard to ignore the patterns of power and influence they are trying to expose.
The final Inside Climate News article was published here: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07082025/wells-fargo-drops-climate-commitments-protest/
