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Top line
Sports leagues and film producers are pushing back against Georgia’s restrictive new election law by threatening to go out of business there. This makes Georgia the latest state to face boycott threats – but while boycotts at the state level can have economic impact, their track record in producing policy cannot be underestimated. The results are more mixed:
State Capitol Building for a demonstration against Arizona’s immigration bill SB 1070 on July 29, 2010.Getty Images
Important facts
Impact: State lawmakers backed down and partially repealed the law a year after it was signed after a 2017 Associated Press analysis found that boycotts had increased North Carolina by more than 3.76 over a 12-year period could bring billions of dollars in economic activity.
South Carolina, 1999: The NAACP called for a boycott of South Carolina over the state’s refusal to stop flying the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds, and the NCAA followed suit by refusing to hold tournaments in the state.
Impact: The Confederate flag was only removed from the Capitol in 2015 after a white supremacist killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, although the boycott likely cost the state millions of dollars in lost business.
Impact: The bill was blocked by a federal judge before it took effect, meaning entertainment companies didn’t have to follow through on their threats and more than 200 television and film productions still spent a combined $2.2 billion in Georgia in fiscal year 2020 have.
Important background
Experts point to a few trends that explain why some state-level boycotts work better than others. Boycotts rarely result in serious, lasting financial damage to states or companies, but they can damage the victim’s image in the long run, says Brayden King, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. For this reason, King believes that boycott campaigns tend to achieve their political goals when lawmakers are afraid of reputational damage. “Nobody wants to turn their state into a pariah location,” said Ed Soule, a Georgetown economics professor. Additionally, boycott threats appear to work best when companies can easily move to a new location, local activists support the effort, and the public continues to pay attention after the initial shock wears off, noted University of North Carolina economics professor Larry Chavis: “In In a way it can stay in the headlines if we have local champions,” he said.
Crucial quote
“In a landscape where there is a lot of competition for attention and attention, I think boycott targets often just wait and hope that another event occurs that catches people’s attention,” King said. “This is a strategy for dealing with a boycott… At some point the attention subsides and the reputational threat disappears, so to speak.”
What you should pay attention to
Georgia became the latest target of boycotts last month when lawmakers passed a set of restrictive new voting rules that critics called a form of suppression. Will Smith responded by pulling his upcoming film “Emancipation” from Georgia, the MLB moved this year’s All-Star Game from Atlanta and local companies like Delta criticized the law.
Cons
Some activists have rejected calls to boycott Georgia, arguing that they would cause economic harm to ordinary Georgians and were unlikely to sway Republican lawmakers. Voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, in particular, has called on companies to “stand and fight.”
tangent
Georgia-based companies like Delta and Coca-Cola were initially reluctant to take a clear stand against the new voting law, but eventually criticized it. Experts like King and Soule say these companies are likely taking a stand not out of fear of consumer backlash, but rather because of lobbying by their employees. “The group that seems to have the most influence these days is the workforce,” Soule said.
further reading
Will Smith’s Film ‘Emancipation’ Leaves Georgia Over Voting Restrictions – See Full Boycott List (Forbes)
‘Stay and fight’: Stacey Abrams says companies shouldn’t boycott Georgia over voting restrictions (Forbes)
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I’m an associate editor for Forbes’ news team. I previously covered local news in Boston and graduated from Tufts University in 2019. You can contact me at jwalsh@forbes.com or on Twitter at @joewalshiv.
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