Salience Games: Keeping Environmental Issues In (and Out) of the Public Eye

Businesses and green activists seek to influence public attention to the social impacts of a sector—they play salience games. An activist allocates funds between campaigning against a polluting industry and other environmental projects. When public attention is scarce, a greater campaign orientation induces industry to invest more heavily in symbolic action that cloaks damage and reduces the risk of salience. This makes fundraising more challenging for the activist, diminishing funds available for both campaign and non-campaign activities. The activist strategically biases its mission away from campaigns—and in favor of broad versus narrow campaigns— but not by as much as a welfare-motivated planner would wish. When salience is avoided by a mixture of symbolic and substantive action, a greater weight on the latter induces the NGO to become more campaign-oriented, with environmental damage lower and welfare higher. Concentrated industries prefer symbolic action, and un-concentrated industries prefer substantive action.