Salience games: Private politics when public attention is limited

Anthony Heyes*, Thomas P. Lyon, Steve Martin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We develop a theoretical model in which an industry and NGO play salience games—they act strategically to influence public attention to social impacts in the sector. Salience stimulates extra donations for the NGO, and thus firms have incentives to hide the damage they do in order to avoid public attention. We show that when public attention is scarce, a greater campaign orientation induces industry to invest in greater obfuscation, starving the NGO of funds. The NGO in turn strategically biases its mission away from campaigns—and in favor of sector-wide versus firm-specific campaigns—but not by as much as a welfare-motivated planner would want. When public attention is avoided by a mixture of substantive and symbolic action, we show that a greater weight on the former induces the NGO to become more campaign-oriented, with social damage lower. Highly competitive industries have greater incentives to commit to substantive actions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)396-410
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of Environmental Economics and Management
Volume88
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Heyes acknowledges financial support from SSHRC under Insight Grant Number 435-2012-472 . Heyes holds a Canadian Research Chair (CRC) at University of Ottawa and is part-time Professor of Economics at University of Sussex. Lyon is the Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce at the University of Michigan. Martin acknowledges financial support from SSHRC under its Canada Graduate Scholarship program. We are grateful to Benjamin Chen (Berkeley), Roberton Williams III (Maryland), Huseyin Yildirim (Duke), Charles Mason (Wyoming), Nicole Robitaille (Queens), Sandeep Kapur (London), the editor and two referees of this journal and seminar participants at the 2016 CPEG in Montreal, the 2017 Great Lakes Political Economy Theory Conference, the 2017 Paris Workshop on Green NGOs, and the 2017 Public Choice Society Meetings in New Orleans for very constructive help. Errors are ours.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

  • Limited attention
  • NGOs
  • Non-market strategy
  • Salience

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics and Econometrics
  • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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