Social movements’ impact on inequality beliefs, preferences for redistribution, and political participation

Bruno Martorano, Laura Metzger, Patricia Justino and F. Iacoella
Additional contact information
Bruno Martorano: Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, RS: GSBE MGSoG

No 2025-027, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: We study whether exposure to social movements campaigning against income and gender income inequality shifts individual beliefs about inequality, reshapes preferences for redistribution, and translates into political participation in the UK. Since the Great Recession of the 2010s, the UK has seen significant growth in social movements, particularly those mobilizing against inequality. We focus on income and gender income inequality, two persistent and politically contested forms of inequality in advanced democracies like the UK. Responses to social movements can diverge sharply between them. Using observational data, we show that exposure to protests against inequality is strongly correlated with increased support for redistribution. To identify causal effects, we complement this evidence with an online experiment in which we randomly assign 1,436 UK citizens to follow real social movement content focused on either income or gender income inequality over a two-week period on Facebook. Participants exposed to information about income inequality increase support for reducing income disparities, while those exposed to gender income inequality support targeted measures to address gender gaps. Both groups favor higher taxes on the wealthy and are more likely to take political action, including signing a petition, contacting a politician, or meeting a public official.

JEL-codes: D31 D72 H23 I38 J16 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11-25
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/289590687/wp2025-027.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:unm:unumer:2025027

DOI: 10.53330/XMAH4513

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ad Notten ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).