Persistent Political Engagement: Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements

We study the causes of sustained participation in political movements. To identify persistent effect protest participation, we randomly indirectly incentivize Hong Kong university students into an antiauthoritarian protest. role social networks, randomize this treatment’s intensity across major-cohort cells. find that incentives to attend one within a movement increase subsequent attendance but only when sufficient fraction individual’s network is also incentivized initial One-time mobilization shocks have dynamic consequences, with at level important for engagement. (JEL D72, D74, I23, Z13)