An Impartial Measure of Collective Action: Development and Validation of the Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale

Cervone, Carmen; Suitner, Caterina; Carraro, Luciana; Maass, Anne

doi:10.31234/osf.io/vunh4

Cited by 5 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment

Sanford¹,

Witkowska²,

Formanowicz³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the consequences of anthropogenic climate change become more apparent, social media has become a central tool for climate change activists to raise awareness and to mobilise society. In two studies, we examine which features of activist messages affect their popularity and behavioural intentions towards climate action. In the first study, tweets (N = 510k) of fifty climate activists posted between November 2015 and December 2020 are examined to measure their emotional content and its relation to tweet diffusion. Climate-related tweets are found to be shared more the less they contain positive emotion and the more they contain negative emotion. This result supports the negativity bias in climate communication on social media. In Study 2 (N = 200), we experimentally test whether negatively versus positively framed environmental content leads to increased reported intent to engage with collective action, and whether mood mediates that link. We find both direct and indirect effects on reported climate action intentions when mood is used as a mediator. The negative mood resulting from seeing negative tweets makes participants more likely to report higher action intention (indirect effect) - congruent with Study 1. However, seeing negative tweets also makes participants less inclined to act (direct effect), indicating a suppression effect and the presence of other factors at work on the pathway between information and action intent formation. This work highlights the complex and multifaceted nature of this relation and motivates more experimental work to identify other relevant factors, as well as how they relate to one another.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment

Sanford¹,

Witkowska²,

Formanowicz³

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The proposed Belief-aligned Collective Action (henceforth, BCA) scale was developed and tested across five studies, three described here, and two available online on Open Science Framework (OSF; Cervone et al, 2022). The first two studies (reported here as Study 1a and 1b) focused on economic inequality and tested the scale on an Italian and a British sample.…”

Section: Scale Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the extensiveness of socio-psychological literature on collective action (Agostini & van Zomeren, 2021) and since we wanted to develop a short measure, items for our scale were selected through a broad literature review on collective action and activism measures, giving priority to frequently used items. We also included non-normative actions (less frequently investigated in the literature) and some additional items that to our knowledge were missing from previous research (e.g., "Displaying posters or banners"; initial items and sources available on OSF; Cervone et al, 2022). The final list of items is available in Table 1.…”

Section: Item Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since our main objective was to develop an unbiased measure that could assess collective action concerning any issue regardless of the attitudes toward the issue itself, the first step in the scale development was to devise an introduction that could discriminate between opposing beliefs about the issue at hand (wording for all items is available on OSF; Cervone et al, 2022). This introduction served to present the topic to participants and assess their personal standing.…”

Section: Devising the Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

An Impartial Measure of Collective Action

Cervone

Suitner

Carraro

et al. 2024

European Journal of Psychological Assessment

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In three studies, we developed and validated the Belief-aligned Collective Action scale (BCA), a new measure of collective action that discriminates the so far confounded engagement in collective action from the ideological stance on the issue. In Studies 1a ( N = 585 Italian adult participants, 61% women) and 1b ( N = 296 British adult participants, 52% women), an Exploratory Factor Analysis identified two factors, Normative and Non-normative actions. In Study 2 ( N = 602 Italian adult participants, 50% women), a bifactor Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed an adequate fit of the two-factor structure. Across studies, the scale presents good internal reliability (as indicated by Cronbach’s α and ω total) and correlations in the predicted direction with common predictors of collective action, namely efficacy, anger, and group identity. Furthermore, Study 2 shows the generalizability of the scale to multiple topics, of which some are more relevant to left-wing people (e.g., wealth tax) and some to right-wing people (e.g., abortion). In these cases, we find no evidence for the effect of ideological variables such as political orientation and system justification. This tool allows researchers to assess collective action unbiasedly, contributing to the bridging of the ideological knowledge gap in the field of social psychology.

show abstract

“…The primary dependent variable of our analysis is reported intention to partake in collective action after viewing the tweets. The belief-aligned collective action scale presented in Cervone et al ( 2021 ) is used. Examples of actions on the scale include: “ I would carry out research to learn more about possible actions I can take to promote my position” and “ I would attend a rally, a march, or a protest to assert my position.” Additionally, to make the Study 2 coherent with Study 1, we added to the scale a question on likelihood of retweeting the presented tweets.…”

Section: Study 2: Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the consequences of anthropogenic climate change become more apparent, social media has become a central tool for environmental activists to raise awareness and to mobilize society. In two studies, we examine how the emotional framing of messages posted by environmental activists influences engagement and behavioral intentions toward environmental action. In the first study, tweets (N = 510k) of 50 environmental activists posted between November 2015 and December 2020 are examined to measure their emotional content and its relation to tweet diffusion. Environment-related tweets are found to be shared more the less they contain positive emotion and the more they contain negative emotion. This result supports the negativity bias on social media. In Study 2 (N = 200), we experimentally test whether negatively vs. positively framed environmental content leads to increased reported intent to engage with collective action, and whether mood mediates that link. We find both direct and indirect effects on reported climate action intentions when mood is used as a mediator. The negative mood resulting from seeing negative tweets makes participants more likely to report higher action intention (indirect effect)—congruent with Study 1. However, seeing negative tweets also makes participants less inclined to act (direct effect), indicating a suppression effect and the presence of other factors at work on the pathway between information and action intent formation. This work highlights the complex and multifaceted nature of this relation and motivates more experimental work to identify other relevant factors, as well as how they relate to one another.

show abstract

An Impartial Measure of Collective Action: Development and Validation of the Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale

Cited by 5 publications

References 32 publications

Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment

Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment

An Impartial Measure of Collective Action

Emotional framing in online environmental activism: Pairing a Twitter study with an offline experiment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About