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.