ENGAGING THE MASSES A quantitative analysis of the role of reputation in explaining membership in environmental organizations
Abstract
This thesis found its point of departure in the conundrum of why people join environmental
organizations. To find what factors can predict membership in environmental organizations is
becoming increasingly important as climate change worsens, and collective action seems out of reach. The value-belief-norm theory argues that when individuals harbor the right values,
beliefs and norms, proenvironmental behavior will ensue and thus alleviate collective action
problems. To some extent, this has been shown to be the case. The literature has failed, however, in explaining costly proenvironmental behavior. This thesis furthers the research agenda by investigating whether reputation can add explanatory power to the VBN theory, through a tentative quantitative analysis of World Values Survey data. Reputation has long been seen as a facilitator of cooperation and could potentially explain why some individuals join
environmental organization or not. The hypotheses tested are 1) Individuals with a strong personal norm will be more likely to join an organization; 2) That an individual that accords a
high reputation to the environmental movement will be more likely to join an organization; 3)
That an egoistic individual will be as likely as an altruistic individual, or more likely, to join an
organization. Through conducting several logistic regressions this thesis finds support for all of
the hypotheses. Future research would benefit from replicating the results found in this thesis.
Furthermore, future research should focus on disaggregating the “environmental movement”
and study membership in relation to specific organizations whether local or national, big or
small.
Degree
Master theses
Collections
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Date
2018-10-31Author
Karan, Nicola
Keywords
Environmental organization
Proenvironmental behavior
VBN theory
Reputation
Collective action
Language
eng