Testing the Durability of Persuasion From Moral Appeals About Renewable Energy

Abstract

Research shows that opinions rooted in moral justifications may be more stable over time. This suggests that communicators could create more durable persuasion by adding explicit moral claims (i.e., stating that the issue is a matter of right vs. wrong) to persuasive messages. Here, using animated videos about the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we conducted a three-stage longitudinal experiment (N = 4,488) to test whether messages with explicit moral claims have more durable persuasive effects than similar messages without. We replicated this test across two distinct moral dimensions: harm to innocent people and contamination of nature’s purity. Our findings show that all message versions had strong immediate persuasive effects relative to a control condition, and much of those effects remained after a 3-week period. However, there were no clear advantages—in immediate effects or in durability—from adding explicit moral claims to the messages.