Case study: Feedback and collective action
There have long been questions over whether larger organisations are more effective at collective campaigning than their smaller counterparts. Do large groups need coercion or incentives to ensure co-ordination amongst their members, or do they have the critical mass needed to generate further support? Are small groups more organisationally efficient and effective?
A paper by Helen Margetts, Peter John and Tobias Escher examined how the internet's ability to provide real-time information about the behaviour of others can affect incentives to act collectively.
They examined whether "information about how many other people have undertaken a participatory activity (such as donating money to a cause or signing a petition) will affect people's decisions about whether to incur costs themselves in the pursuit of collective action"[i].
In one experiment, two groups were provided with a list of six petitions and asked whether they agreed with the issues being petitioned for, to spend 10 minutes finding out about the issue and whether they would sign the petition and whether they would give a small proportion of their participation fee towards supporting the issue.
However, one group received information about how many people had signed the petition – some of the petitions had high numbers of signatures, some low – and the other group received no information.
The six petitions related to introducing a tax on plastic carrier bags (with 665,768 signatories), urging the Japanese government to end its support for whaling (nine), creating a National Day of Remembrance as a public holiday (369,492), providing free prescriptions for asthma sufferers regardless of income (11), adopting an opt out system for organ donation (1,234,117) and scrapping the introduction of compulsory identity cards (six).
The researchers found 46 per cent of petitions were signed by the group which received no information about the number of signatories, and 54 per cent by those who received information about other people signing.
For one issue out of the six, that on organ donation, those who had information about the number of signatories were significantly more likely to sign up.
As this was the only petition where the number of signatures was into seven figures, the researchers suggested "a possible hypothesis that 'critical mass' where the information makes a difference could be one million" [ii]. Although the number of participants in the experiment was not large enough to draw firm conclusions, they added: "Across the six petitions there was a positive correlation with the number of other people signing (when numbers were high) and the likelihood of an individual signing."[iii]
In a second, larger, experiment, participants again examined a range of issues and were then asked to indicate their willingness to sign a petition supporting the issue and donate a small part of their participation fee to support the issue.
One group of participants received no information about the number of other people signing the petitions, while the other group did receive such information. This group was then sub-divided into three sub-groups, so that for each petition, a subgroup was told that either a 'very large' (over a million), 'medium' (100 to one million) or 'very low' (less than 100) number of people had signed.
This made it possible to examine whether, for each of the petition subjects, different information about how many signatures there were made any difference to willingness to sign.
The group which received no information about the number of signatories signed 62.5 per cent of the petitions.
Of the petitions which were presented has having low numbers of signatories, some 1.9 per cent fewer were signed, while for those with medium signatories an additional 1.9 per cent were signed. "For those presented with high numbers, 66.7 per cent were signed (that is, 4.2 per cent more than in the control group) and this result is significant," [iv] noted the researchers.
The experiments found that two-thirds of those who signed a petition went on to make a donation.
"Interestingly, an as yet unexplained feature of the patterns of donation is that for every petition in the larger experiment, almost exactly two-thirds of those who signed went on to donate, suggesting some kind of universal effect. Even with the rather different experimental set-up and much smaller numbers in the laboratory experiment, a similar effect could be observed." [v]
And it also found some evidence to suggest that low numbers of signatories have a negative effect on donations (with the exception of a petition on Darfur), while high numbers had a small positive effect on all except a petition on cluster bombs.
"Across the two experiments, we found support for our hypothesis that people's willingness to take part in collective action will be affected by information about the number of other people who have also taken part. When it comes to signing petitions, people are positively affected by the information that there are one million or more other signatories and this effect was observable across our two experimental designs. For donating money, these high numbers do not 'pull' participants towards this more costly form of participation, but there is evidence that numbers below this level can have a negative effect on people's willingness to donate, found in the laboratory experiment." [vi]
The researchers concluded that the results lend credence to the idea that a campaign can reach a 'critical mass', suggesting that larger organisations may have a campaigning advantage over a certain size.
But they also not that there are other practical implications for those running online petitions.
"The findings of our research suggest that up to a certain point, indication of existing support could have a negative effect on people's willingness to participate, particularly when it comes to 'stronger' participatory acts like donation and it might be efficacious to suppress such numbers. Once numbers have surpassed one million, providing them makes sense because they are likely to have a positive effect, at least for weaker participatory acts such as signing petitions." [vii]
Margetts et al rightly note that "empirical evidence is scarce" when it comes to examining how the internet enhances political participation.
It would be wrong to read too much into one set of experiments, but some tentative lessons could perhaps be drawn.
The implications for microparties are that indications of support should be restrained until they reach a significant level, although for parties with a small target audience this would be meaningless and the critical mass may be proportionately less for campaigns which do not have a national audience.
Equally, however, while the experiments considered how participants' prior beliefs affected their willingness to sign the petition or donate, it is less clear that the subject of the petitions would exercise as strong a pull as a microparty which relates directly to a citizen's job, regional location or social identity.
But for policy frameworks and microgovernance, these experiments provide further evidence that support is likely to cluster around a small number of policies. This would simplify administration, reduce social conflict and enhance legitimacy while not precluding diversity where it is wished.
Footnotes:
[i] Margetts, H., John, P. and Escher, T. (2009), 'Experiments for Web Science: Examining the Effect of the Internet on Collective Action', paper to the 1st Web Science Conference, Athens, March 18–20, 2009. Available at http://www.governmentontheweb.org/downloads/papers/Margetts_et_al_Experiments_for_Web_Science_2009.pdf [January 18, 2009].
[ii] Margetts, H. et al (2009), p. 3.
[iii] Margetts, H. et al (2009), p. 3.
[iv] Margetts, H. et al (2009), p. 3.
[v] Margetts, H. et al (2009), p. 3.
Recent comments