Working Paper: NBER ID: w23110
Authors: Davide Cantoni; David Y. Yang; Noam Yuchtman; Y. Jane Zhang
Abstract: The decision to protest is strategic: an individual's participation is a function of her beliefs about others' turnout. Models of protest often assume strategic complementarity; however, the challenge of collective action suggests strategic substitutability. We conduct the first field experiment directly manipulating individuals' beliefs about others' protest participation, in the context of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement. We elicit university students' planned participation in an upcoming protest and their prior beliefs about others' participation, in an incentivized manner. One day before the protest, we randomly provide a subset of subjects with truthful information about others' protest plans, and elicit posterior beliefs about protest turnout, again in an incentivized manner. This allows us to identify the causal effects of positively and negatively updated beliefs about others' protest participation on subjects' turnout. We consistently find evidence of strategic substitutes. Analysis of control group subjects and survey evidence reinforce our experimental findings.
Keywords: protest participation; strategic complements; strategic substitutes; Hong Kong; democracy movement
JEL Codes: D74; D80
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Prior beliefs about others' planned participation below the truth (D80) | Positive effect on beliefs about actual turnout (D79) |
| Positive effect on beliefs about actual turnout (D79) | Decrease in own likelihood of participating in the protest (D79) |
| Prior beliefs about others' planned participation above the truth (D80) | Negative effect on beliefs about others' actual turnout (C92) |
| Negative effect on beliefs about others' actual turnout (C92) | Increase in own likelihood of participating in the protest (C92) |
| One percentage point increase in beliefs about others' participation (C92) | Approximately half percentage point decrease in own likelihood of attending the protest (D79) |