Persistent political engagement: social interactions and the dynamics of protest movements

Leonardo Bursztyn, Davide Cantoni, David Yang, Noam Yuchtman and Y. Jane Zhang

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We study the causes of sustained participation in political movements. To identify the persistent effect of protest participation, we randomly indirectly incentivize Hong Kong university students into participation in an antiauthoritarian protest. To identify the role of social networks, we randomize this treatment’s intensity across major-cohort cells. We find that incentives to attend one protest within a political movement increase subsequent protest attendance but only when a sufficient fraction of an individual’s social network is also incentivized to attend the initial protest. One-time mobilization shocks have dynamic consequences, with mobilization at the social network level important for sustained political engagement.

Keywords: political movements; social interactions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 I23 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2021-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-net, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published in American Economic Review: Insights, 1, June, 2021, 3(2), pp. 233 - 250. ISSN: 2640-205X

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/107087/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Persistent Political Engagement: Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:107087

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