Strategic participation in protests: evidence from women’s march in Chile
Professor Advisor
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Pino Emhart, Francisco José
Author
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Crozier Barbosa, Agustina
Admission date
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2024-09-11T16:41:03Z
Available date
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2024-09-11T16:41:03Z
Publication date
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2024
Identifier
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10.58011/wsjr-1w18
Identifier
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https://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/200998
Abstract
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In economics and political science, there is insufficient consensus regarding the strategic incentives individuals encounter when deciding to participate in protests. Although most theoretical
models assume strategic complementarity, recent evidence (Cantoni et al., 2019) suggests the presence of strategic substitutability. In this paper, we study how agents’ reference groups can influence
their strategic decision to attend demonstrations and protests. In particular, we study whether
strategic incentives with respect to the own group — according to some given dimension — differ
from those with respect to the other group. To accomplish this, we conduct a field experiment
involving undergraduate students from two universities during the 2023 Women’s March in Chile.
We define reference groups in terms of students’ (self-reported) household income. Agents are then
randomly assigned to one of six treatments, with information about the intention to participate in
the march reported by their own group, the other group, the entire sample, or a combination of
these. With these treatments, we assess whether agents present heterogeneous strategic incentives
concerning their group and the other. Our results indicate that participation of high-income students is substantially underestimated by the entire sample on average, while the participation of
low-income students appears to be more accurately predicted. In addition, students from different
socioeconomic backgrounds behave strategically differently. Evidence suggests that both groups of
students behave as strategic complements, but in regards to different reference groups: while the
higher income group demonstrates complementarities with both the own and other group, the lower
income group only behaves as complements with the other group.
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Lenguage
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en
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Publisher
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Universidad de Chile
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Type of license
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States