General Trust or Outgroup Trust?: Trust and Social Movement Participation

• In Event: 219 - Regular Session. Social Movement Participation and Methods

Abstract

Previous research finds that individuals who have greater trust in others are more likely to be politically active, both in terms of conventional political participation, such as voting, as well as unconventional, non-institutional forms of participation such as protest. Yet, researchers have failed to distinguish which forms of trust, or trust in whom, drive different forms of political participation. Furthermore, social movement scholars interested in micro-mobilization have given little attention to trust as determinant of protest participation. To begin to address these gaps, this article compares the effects of outgroup trust, ingroup trust, and general trust on social movement participation, specifically petition signing and peaceful demonstration attendance. Applying hierarchical logistic regression modeling to data from the World Values Survey 6th wave, we find that, in general, outgroup trust predicts individuals’ participation in these forms of protest much better than does general trust or ingroup trust, after controlling for other explanations of protest participation. In other words, it is specifically trust in others different from oneself, as opposed to trust in others in general or trust in others like oneself, which most powerfully motivated participation in collective action. This finding complicates existing rational choice explanations for the relationship between trust and political participation.

Authors

• Hyungjun Suh, Univeristy of Arizona

• Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, University of Arizona