Social Identification in Collective Climate Activism: Predicting Participation in the Environmental Movement, Extinction Rebellion

ABSTRACT

Human-induced climate change poses an unprecedented global threat. Researchers agree that dealing with climate change requires international collective action and widespread social transformation. This study integrates insights from the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA) and the Encapsulated Model of Social Identity in Collective Action (EMSICA) to explain participation in the environmental movement, Extinction Rebellion (XR). Structural equation models of data from a survey of 203 current or potential XR activists supported two identity-based pathways to collective action behavior and future intentions: moral convictions → anger → XR identification → collective action and global identification → participative efficacy → XR identification → collective action. Perceived group efficacy predicted collective action intentions but not behavior. Fear, guilt/shame, and hope did not significantly predict collective action behavior or intentions. We discuss the interplay of personal and social identity processes underlying climate change activism, as well as the need for longitudinal and experimental studies to disentangle causal relations. We propose that environmental campaign groups could foster group identification and thence collective action by communicating moral outrage about climate change, together with the potential efficacy of individuals’ actions toward achieving the group’s goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective climate action
• extinction Rebellion
• group efficacy and participative efficacy
• perceived injustice and moral outrage
• social identity

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the OSF repository at [http://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/M457P].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental information for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Previous research has explored the role of other identity categories: Bamberg et al. (2015) found that efficacy beliefs, injustice and community identification predicted pro-environmental collective action. Van der Werff et al. (2013) found that boosting individuals’ environmental identity increased their environmental action.

2. The questionnaire also included measures of social participation norms (adapted from Rees & Bamberg, 2014) and normative conflict (after Packer, 2008). These were not included in the current analyses for reasons of parsimony and sample size.

3. Pathways from participative efficacy to XR identification and from group efficacy to collective action intentions were already expected, but in our initial structural model these had been fully mediated by hope and by XR identification respectively. A path from moral convictions to anger was consistent with previous theorizing about “moral outrage” as a basis for collective action (e.g., Thomas & McGarty, 2009). A path from participative efficacy to lower fear was consistent with Bandura’s (1983) claim that fear arises from “perceived inefficacy in coping with potentially aversive events” (p. 465).