Persistent Political Engagement: Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements
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Leonardo Bursztyn
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Davide Cantoni
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David Y. Yang
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Noam Yuchtman
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Y. Jane Zhang
- American Economic Review: Insights (Forthcoming)
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.
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