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

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.