IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/joupea/v60y2023i5p745-759.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

National identity, willingness to fight, and collective action

Author

Listed:
  • Austin Horng-En Wang

    (Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

  • Nadia Eldemerdash

    (Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Abstract

Why do people risk their lives fighting in wars? This article looks beyond group grievance and material benefits to add another psychological mechanism explaining why people choose to fight or not to fight – perceived collective action. An individual is much more likely to fight when they perceive that others will also fight. Contrary to the expectations of social identity theory and social pressure theory, the effect of perceived collective action is stronger among those who have a weaker national identity because they are more likely to rationally calculate the chance of winning by accounting for others’ decisions. To mitigate the endogeneity in post-conflict cross-sectional surveys, we conduct a survey experiment (n = 1,001) in Taiwan manipulating perceptions of others’ willingness to fight in a potential China–Taiwan military conflict. Experimental evidence supports the hypotheses that perceived collective action works only on weak Taiwanese identifiers. The result holds in robustness checks and in another nationally representative survey.

Suggested Citation

  • Austin Horng-En Wang & Nadia Eldemerdash, 2023. "National identity, willingness to fight, and collective action," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 60(5), pages 745-759, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:60:y:2023:i:5:p:745-759
    DOI: 10.1177/00223433221099058
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433221099058
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00223433221099058?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:joupea:v:60:y:2023:i:5:p:745-759. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.prio.no/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.