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Are Protests Games of Strategic Complements or Substitutes? Experimental Evidence from Hong Kong's Democracy Movement

Author

Listed:
  • 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Davide Cantoni & David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman & Y. Jane Zhang, 2017. "Are Protests Games of Strategic Complements or Substitutes? Experimental Evidence from Hong Kong's Democracy Movement," NBER Working Papers 23110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23110
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    3. Barbera, Salvador & Jackson, Matthew O., 2020. "A Model of Protests, Revolution, and Information," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 15(3), pages 297-335, July.
    4. Lorenz Goette & Egon Tripodi, 2021. "Social Influence in Prosocial Behavior: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment [“Social Distance and Social Decisions]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 2373-2398.
    5. Ponticelli, Jacopo & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2020. "Austerity and anarchy: Budget cuts and social unrest in Europe, 1919–2008," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 1-19.
    6. Xue, Melanie Meng & Koyama, Mark, 2018. "Autocratic Rule and Social Capital: Evidence from Imperial China," MPRA Paper 84249, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Vanessa C. Burbano, 2021. "The Demotivating Effects of Communicating a Social-Political Stance: Field Experimental Evidence from an Online Labor Market Platform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 1004-1025, February.
    8. Camilo García-Jimeno & Angel Iglesias & Pinar Yildirim, 2018. "Women, Rails and Telegraphs: An Empirical Study of Information Diffusion and Collective Action," NBER Working Papers 24495, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • P0 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - General

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