A study of community attitudes towards protest in Australia, focusing on the influence of protest tactics and the interaction with belief in conspiracy theories. The study found that support for protest was influenced by both the cause and the tactics used, with peaceful protests significantly more supported than disruptive or violent protests.

The study presents the findings of a randomised survey experiment involving 3,301 online Australians who were asked about their support for environmental, anti-lockdown and sovereign citizen protests as well as different protest tactics, which included peaceful marching, disrupting traffic and violent clashes with police.

Findings

• Among the three movements included, environmental protests had the highest level of support and the lowest level of opposition, irrespective of the tactics used. 
• More than half of respondents (58.3%) were supportive or strongly supportive of peaceful environmental protest, compared with 27.4 percent for sovereign citizen protests and 15.9 percent for anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests.
• The strongest opposition was to anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests, followed by protests relating to the sovereign citizen movement. 
• Those who believed in conspiracy theories were found more likely to support violent protest.