You are a hero! The influence of audience-as-hero narratives on policy support

Politics and Policy. 2024. Vol. 52. No. 3. P. 479–499.

Chalaya T., Schlaufer C., Uldanov A.

Effective communication increases support for policy measures. This article argues that a narrative that portrays a policy's target group as a hero is most effective in generating support for the given policy. The research builds on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to test the influence of an audience-as-hero narrative on the opinion about a new campfire regulation among visitors to a national park in Russia. A survey experiment with 314 visitors to the national park compares the influence of a narrative portraying the regulation's target group as a hero (a park visitor) on policy opinion and a narrative portraying another hero (a firefighter). Results show that the audience-as-hero narrative has more influence on policy support than a nonnarrative message and also more than a narrative portraying another hero. This indicates that audience-as-hero narratives are particularly effective in generating support for policies.

Keywords: Россия, окружающая среда, environmental policy, политическая коммуникация, regulation, effective communication, целевая группа, policy narratives, narrative policy framework, политический нарратив, regional policy measures, ландшафтные пожары, wildfires