Being moved by protest: Collective efficacy beliefs and injustice appraisals enhance collective action intentions for forest protection via positive and negative emotions

By Helen Landmann, Anette Rohmann. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2020

124 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Based on collective action theories and appraisal theories of emotion, we propose that people are moved and positively overwhelmed by the idea that together they can make a difference for a more sustainable future and that these feelings motivate them to participate in pro-environmental collective action. We surveyed activists and sympathizers of a forest protection campaign (Study 1, N = 210) and conducted an experiment (Study 2, N = 221) to test this claim. As expected, feelings of being moved mediated the effect of collective efficacy beliefs on collective action intentions in both studies. Hence, being moved constitutes a second emotional path to collective action alongside group-based anger. These two emotional paths differently elicited the goal to punish authorities (intergroup goal), to be part of the movement (intragroup goal), and to reduce climate change (ideological goal). The findings suggest that negative and positive emotions (anger and being moved) amplify already existing motivations.

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2fd38b3a86c5f234f982cd73722b3666649d7552

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States (2021, background): “Given the divide between U.S. liberals’ and conservatives’ support for climate change mitigation (Ballew et al., 2020; Leiserowitz et al., 2020; McCright et al., 2014) and prominent U.S. politicians’ portrayal of Sweden as a socialist democracy (Zeballos-Roig, 2020), Greta Thunberg's message of…”