Collective actions occur all around the world and, in the last few years, even more
frequently. Previous literature has mainly focused on the antecedents of collective
actions, but less attention has been given to the consequences of participating
in collective action. Moreover, it is still an open question how the consequences
of ...
Collective actions occur all around the world and, in the last few years, even more
frequently. Previous literature has mainly focused on the antecedents of collective
actions, but less attention has been given to the consequences of participating
in collective action. Moreover, it is still an open question how the consequences
of collective action might differ, depending on whether the actions are perceived
to succeed or fail. In two studies we seek to address this gap using innovative
experimental studies. In Study 1 (N = 368) we manipulated the perceptions of
success and failure of a collective action in the context of a real social movement,
the Chilean student movement from last decade. In Study 2 (N = 169), in addition
to manipulating the outcome, we manipulated actual participation, using a mock
environmental organization aiming to create awareness in authorities, to test the
causal effect of both participation and success/failure on empowerment, group
efficacy, and intentions of future involvement in normative and non-normative
collective actions. Results show that current and past participation predict overall
participation in the future, however, in Study 2 the manipulated participation
was associated with having less intentions of participating in the future. In both
studies, perception of success increases group efficacy. In Study 1, we found that
when facing failure, participants increase their willingness to participate more in
the future as opposed to non-participants that actually decrease theirs. In Study
2, however, failure increases the perception of efficacy for those with a history of
non-normative participation. Altogether these results highlight the moderating
role of the outcome of collective action to understand the effect of participation
on future participation. We discuss these results in light of the methodological
innovation and the real world setting in which our studies were conducted.