Guns, pets, and strikes: an experiment on identity and political action

Boris Ginzburg and Jose-Alberto Guerra

No 19932, Documentos CEDE from Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE

Abstract: We study the implications of participation in political collective action on identity and on interpersonal interactions using a laboratory experiment. We offer subjects the possibility to sign an online petition, which was either related to animal rights or the right to bear firearms. Before and after the petition, we measure subjects' altruism and willingness to trust by asking them to play a dictator game and a trust game in pairs. The results show that there is considerably more altruism and more trust when both subjects had signed the petition than when one or both had not signed. The same behaviour is observed when we analyse high-cost political participation, namely, joining a street protest. This suggests that the experience of common participation in political collective action creates an identity that produces in-group favouritism. These results also suggest a reason why individuals choose to participate in political action despite private costs and a low probability of affecting the outcome: participation creates private benefits in subsequent interactions with fellow participants.

Keywords: political identity; collective action; social preferences; laboratory experiment; petitions; street protests (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 D79 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 76
Date: 2021-12-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/bitstream/handle/1992/54221/dcede2021-58.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Guns, pets, and strikes: an experiment on identity and political action (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:col:000089:019932

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documentos CEDE from Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Universidad De Los Andes-Cede ().