Achieving healthy and profitable production through collective action? The case of vegetable farmers in the French West Indies.

Given the multiple challenges that agriculture faces, collective action is a potential pathway towards more sustainable agriculture. This article aims to contribute to the literature by assessing the extent to which collective action can meet the objective of both healthy and profitable production in the French West Indies. To do so, we call on the theory of collective action and emphasise the role of formal and informal collectives in achieving the objectives of improving income and implementing agroecological practices. We use original data collected in 2022 from 409 vegetable farmers in Martinique and Guadeloupe. We consider the interdependence between farmers' economic and environmental objectives through a simultaneous equations model. We characterise the diversity of collectives according to their degree of formalisation and to the adequacy between the objectives pursued by these collectives and the individual objectives of their members. Our results show that the achievement of an individual objective is fostered by its adequacy with the objective set by the collective and also, to a certain extent, by the degree of formalisation of this collective. It appears that achieving individual objectives is based on sharing common objectives as well as having collective rules. More particularly, we find that producer organisations - collectives considered to be the most formal - best meet the objectives of improving income and adopting agroecological practices. However, in the French West Indies, the instability of such collectives and the organisational deficiencies of the sector call into question their real long-term impact. These findings contribute to a better understanding of farmers' decision-making and provide relevant policy implications for supporting agricultural collectives in managing and federating producers towards achieving a more healthy and profitable production.

Motivations to engage in collective action: A latent profile analysis of refugee supporters.

What motivates people to participate in collective action? Some actions such as symbolic or online actions are often critiqued as performative allyship, motivated by personal gain rather than genuine concern for the cause. We aim to adjudicate this argument by examining the quality of motivations for acting, drawing on the insights of self-determination theory and the social identity approach. Using latent profile analysis, we examined whether there are different types of supporters of refugees based on their underlying motives. In Study 1, we surveyed supporters of Syrian refugees from six nations (N = 936) and measured autonomous and controlled motivation, pro-refugee identification and collective action. In Study 2 (N = 1994), we surveyed supporters of Ukrainian refugees in Romania, Hungary and the UK. We found 4-5 profiles in each sample and consistently found that supporters with high autonomous motivation take more action than disengaged or ambivalent supporters (low/neutral on all motives). However, contrary to the tenets of self-determination theory, those high in both autonomous and controlled motives were the most engaged. We conclude that the most committed supporters are those with multiple motives, but further research is needed on the role of controlled motivation.

Promoting collective precycling behavior: results from a group intervention with Berlin households in Germany.

To tackle the global waste crisis, there is an urgent need for decisive and joint action at multiple levels. The collective behavior of a community could make a significant contribution. This paper presents the results of a field experiment designed to promote packaging waste prevention - called precycling - in a newly formed community setting, in Berlin, Germany. The aim was to examine the effect of the intervention on precycling and to examine the underlying social identity processes. Over a four-week period, 132 participants from 96 different households digitally received a combination of different interventions, that were theoretically informed by the Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Action (SIMPEA). Households were assigned to two intervention groups and a waiting control group. Data was collected before, immediately after and four months after the intervention to assess the impact of the intervention using multilevel models. After the intervention, the overall precycling behavior increased significantly, but not as a result of the different group conditions. In the more comprehensive intervention group, which included social interaction and behavioral experimentation, the community identification was strengthened and the reuse behavior, as a subset of precycling, increased. While a number of social identity processes (collective efficacy beliefs, having a precycling action goal, crisis appraisal, and sufficiency attitudes) were found to positively predict the precycling behavior, surprisingly, the predictive power of social norms and ingroup identification could not be confirmed. Overall, the presented community intervention promoted precycling. However, in this dynamic real-world setting, not all intervention elements worked as expected. The pitfalls and opportunities of this intervention are discussed, and ideas for translating the results into everyday precycling activities are presented.

Unraveling Image and Justice Concerns: A Social Identity Account on Appraisals and Emotional Drivers of High-Status Transgressor Group Members' Solidarity With Low-Status Groups.

High-status group members typically respond defensively when their ingroup members transgress against low-status groups. However, when they identify highly with transgressor groups, they sometimes also engage in solidarity with victimized low-status groups due to ingroup-focused motives. Yet, the response of low-identified transgressor group members, who can prioritize victims' plight over ingroup interests, remains underexplored. To address this gap, we conducted three preregistered studies (Ntotal = 886) concerning education-based transgressions in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, employing cross-sectional (Study 1) and experimental designs (Studies 2-3). Supporting previous research, we found that high-identifiers engage in nonradical solidarity driven by ingroup image concerns and image-related emotions. Low-identifiers, however, engage in both nonradical and radical solidarity through perceived injustice and justice-related emotions. Our findings provide insights into the roots of high-status group collective action on behalf of low-status groups against intergroup transgressions. Theoretical and societal implications were discussed.

Leadership and discursive mobilizing of collective action in the Jonestown mass killing.

We study a transcript of discourse recorded on an open mic during the mass suicide/murder of 909 members of a religious community in Jonestown in 1978. The 'Jonestown massacre' is often cited in psychology textbooks as a warning example of how powerful situations and charismatic leaders can lead ordinary people to extreme and destructive behaviours. These accounts suggest that individuals lose control of reason and will such that their behaviour becomes subject to outside control. We develop an alternative explanation of the mass killing as identity-based collective action. Our analysis shows how a shared understanding of the community's situation and the options available to them were constructed and contested in discourse. We demonstrate how Jim Jones served as impresario, entrepreneur and champion of identity, recognizing his followers' agency, initiating collective meaning-making and mobilizing action. Jones engaged his followers in jointly constructing the situation as hopeless, developing a shared view of their situated social identity and collectively formulating the identity-congruent solution of collective suicide as a hopeful act of collective agency. Our analysis points to the importance of addressing the conditions that sustain narratives of collective hopelessness and helping groups successfully choose non-extremist pathways out of hopelessness.

Participatory irrigation management, social capital, and efficiency in rice production. Understanding the linkage in the case of irrigated rice farms in Northern Thailand.

Enforcement of rules to increase farmers' involvement in participatory irrigation management (PIM) has been ineffective given the non-exclusivity nature of surface irrigation. In this study, we investigated the interrelationship of the social capital's role in higher participation in PIM and the effects towards farmers' efficiency using the case of rice farmers in Northern Thailand. We found that higher intention to participate in PIM collective activities is largely driven by the water user's social capital endowments. Farmers' efficiency level is positively associated with PIM participation and the condition of the collective irrigation management. Our findings suggest the importance of complementing current government efforts with policy interventions focusing on strengthening water user groups' social capital, such as improving group cohesion and their capacity for networking in compensating for various impediments faced by farmers.

Virtuous Collective Attention.

How can a collective pay attention virtuously? Imagine a group of scientists. It matters what topics they pay attention to, that is, which topics they draw to the foreground and take to be relevant, and which they leave in the background. It also matters which aspects of an investigated phenomenon they foreground, and which aspects they leave unnoticed in the background. If we want to understand not only how individuals pay attention of this kind virtuously, but also collectives, we first need a framework to understand virtuous collective agency. A result of this article will be that virtuous collective action depends on the collective being institutionalized. At the same time, we have to think of the constituents of the collective in terms of practical identities (as opposed to individuals). This is what enables us to understand how a collective can acquire the stability required for virtue, and how we don't end up with a summative account of group virtue, respectively. It will be argued that collectives only have the required stability in their actions when their commitments are habitualized in the form of institutionalized procedures. An Aristotelian understanding of virtue distinguishes between commitment, inclination, and action. Only when a subject's inclination is fully lined up with her commitment, do we arrive at the required stability (of character) for virtuous action. In the case of individuals, to build up an appropriate inclination consists in an inscribing of the commitment into the feelings and body of the subject. If a commitment is fully 'embodied' in this sense, it has formed the individual's inclination accordingly. How can one make sense of this in the case of collective subjects? This article tries to show that for collectives, the embodiment of commitment (the forming of the fitting inclinations) consists in creating policies, procedures, and rules that stabilize the acting according to the commitment, irrespective of the motivation of each individual involved in the collective. Hence, embodiment of commitment, in the case of collectives, is institutionalization. The article then explores what this requirement of institutionalization means for collective attention. The illustration will draw on a distinction between focused and open-minded attention. It will be shown that for either case - focused and open-minded - in order for a collective to pay attention virtuously, it needs to have its commitments institutionalized.

Framing Unions and Nurses.

Union communication and framing are important for how union members, as well as how unions as organizations, are represented. In the context of declining union density and therefore fewer direct union members, unions' daily communication material on social media may be one of the most common interactions people have with unions. This case study focuses on United Nurses of Alberta, the union for most registered nurses in Alberta, Canada, where unionization rates are among the lowest in Canada. This case study shows how United Nurses of Alberta uses two collective action frames, nurses-as-distinct and nurses-as-advocates, in their daily communication to members and the public. In creating and promoting these frames, United Nurses of Alberta draws from and pushes against the industrial relations framework under which they operate and the historical narrative of nurses as caring and self-sacrificing, which may reinforce common understandings of nursing and also limit United Nurses of Alberta's ability to represent their members.

Unequal by malice, protesters by outrage: Agent perceptions drive moralization of, and collective action against, inequality.

Economic inequality does not encounter strong protests even though individuals are generally against it. One potential explanation of this paradox is that individuals do not perceive inequality as caused by intentional agents, which, in line with the Theory of Dyadic Morality (Schein & Gray, 2018), should prevent its assessment as immoral and consequently dampen moral outrage and collective action. Across three studies, we test and confirm this hypothesis. In Studies 1 (N = 395) and 2 (N = 337), the more participants believed that inequality is human driven and caused by intentional agents, the more they moralized inequality, felt outraged and wanted to engage in collective action. This was confirmed in Study 3 (N = 243) through an experimental design. Thus, our research shows that agent perception is crucial in the moralization of economic inequality and, more broadly, that morality can be a powerful motivator and effectively mobilize people to action.

Elephants in the Room - Analyzing Local Discourses for Sustainable Management of Bannerghatta National Park, South India.

Landscape governance challenges, particularly in peri-urban contexts like the Bannerghatta National Park (BNP) region in South India, exemplify 'wicked' problems due to their inherent complexities. These challenges arise from a mix of conflicting interests, policy ambiguities, and sociocultural dynamics, which often blur the definition of problems and hinder effective solutions. Despite apparent options for resolution, stakeholder disagreements and deep uncertainties about implementation strategies complicate governance. This study, therefore, has two broad objectives. The first objective is to analyze the local discourses surrounding planned policy interventions around the BNP region in South India. Based on the findings, the second objective is to draw insights for sustainable natural resource governance research and practice. We applied Q-methodology to understand the discourses that underpin various conflicts in the rapidly urbanizing elephant corridor at BNP. We elicited information on how various local actors frame solutions to current collective action challenges in the BNP landscape and their perspectives on the proposed eco-sensitive zone notification, as well as the functioning of current policy interventions concerning conservation and development. The study uncovers the micropolitics and power regimes underpinning various natural resource governance challenges and demonstrates the utility of the Q-methodology in bringing diverse perspectives together in response to 'wicked' governance challenges.

The politics of allyship: Multiethnic coalitions and mass attitudes toward protest.

Recent work finds that nonviolent resistance by ethnic minorities is perceived as more violent and requiring more policing than identical resistance by ethnic majorities, reducing its impact and effectiveness. We ask whether allies-advantaged group participants in disadvantaged group movements-can mitigate these barriers. On the one hand, allies can counter negative stereotypes and defuse threat perceptions among advantaged group members, while raising expectations of success and lowering expected risks among disadvantaged group members. On the other hand, allies can entail significant costs, carrying risks of cooptation, replication of power hierarchies, and marginalization of core constituencies. To shed light on this question we draw on the case of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which, in 2020, attracted unprecedented White participation. Employing a national survey experiment, we find that sizeable White presence at racial justice protests increases protest approval, reduces perceptions of violence, and raises the likelihood of participation among White audiences, while not causing significant backlash among Black audiences. Black respondents mostly see White presence as useful for advancing the movement's goals, and predominant White presence reduces expectations that protests will be forcefully repressed. We complement these results with analysis of tens of thousands of images shared on social media during the 2020 BLM protests, finding a significant association between the presence of Whites in the images and user engagement and amplification. The findings suggest that allyship can be a powerful tool for promoting sociopolitical change amid deep structural inequality.

January 6 arrests and media coverage do not remobilize conservatives on social media.

Social media's pivotal role in catalyzing social movements is widely acknowledged across scientific disciplines. Past research has predominantly explored social media's ability to instigate initial mobilization while leaving the question of its capacity to sustain these movements relatively uncharted. This study investigates the persistence of movement activity on Twitter and Gab following a substantial on-the-ground mobilization event catalyzed by social media-the StoptheSteal movement culminating in the January 6th Capitol attack. Our findings indicate that the online communities active in the January 6 mobilization did not display substantial remobilization in the subsequent year. These results highlight the fact that further exploration is needed to understand the factors shaping how and when movements are sustained by social media. In this regard, our study provides valuable insights for scientists across diverse disciplines, on how certain social media platforms may contribute to the evolving dynamics of collective action.

Correcting misperceptions of the material benefits associated with union membership increases Americans' interest in joining unions.

How accurate are Americans' perceptions of the material benefits associated with union membership, and do these perceptions influence their support for, and interest in joining, unions? We explore these questions in a preregistered, survey experiment conducted on a national sample, representative of the US population on a number of demographic benchmarks (n = 1,430). We find that Americans exhibit large and consistent underestimates of the benefits associated with unionization, as compared to evidence from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and peer-reviewed academic research. For example, 89% of Americans underestimated the life-time income premium associated with union membership, 72% underestimated the percentage of union members who receive health insurance from their employer, and 97% overestimated the average union dues rate. We next randomly assigned half of the participants to receive a brief, informational correction conveying results of academic and government research on the material benefits associated with union membership, or not. Those who received the correction reported 11.6% greater interest in joining a union, 7.8% greater support for unions, and 6.9% greater interest in helping to organize a union in their workplace, as compared to the control group. These results suggest that, overall, Americans tend to underestimate the material benefits associated with unionization, misperceptions of these benefits are causally linked to Americans' support for unionization, and correcting these misperceptions increases a range of pro-union sentiments in the American mass public.

An Historical Case Study of Trans Exclusion and Empowerment: Implications for Transgender Older Adults and Aging.

Transgender older adults have a long history of exclusion that shapes current experiences with social services. However, scant gerontological research uses archival data, which can provide critical context for service providers. Moreover, sparse research examines how exclusion can be a catalyst for change that social workers could leverage. Empowerment theory provides a theoretical tool to explain how this is possible. This multidisciplinary case study blends community member interviews and archival data to answer this question: How did exclusion shape empowerment and social change for transgender Americans? This study focuses on the events before and after the Compton's Cafeteria Riot, one of the first acts of LGBTQIA+ collective resistance that led to new services for and by transgender Americans. Data reveal how exclusion facilitated the emergence of collective empowerment among transgender women and queer youth in San Francisco. Archival data shows how exclusion preceded self-efficacy, critical consciousness, involvement with similar others, acquisition of new skills, and ultimately action to eliminate social, economic, and political barriers and power imbalances. This study provides both empirical and theoretical tools to contribute new data and perspectives on trans exclusion and empowerment and its implications for social workers serving transgender older adults.

Nonlinear social evolution and the emergence of collective action.

Organisms from microbes to humans engage in a variety of social behaviors, which affect fitness in complex, often nonlinear ways. The question of how these behaviors evolve has consequences ranging from antibiotic resistance to human origins. However, evolution with nonlinear social interactions is challenging to model mathematically, especially in combination with spatial, group, and/or kin assortment. We derive a mathematical condition for natural selection with synergistic interactions among any number of individuals. This result applies to populations with arbitrary (but fixed) spatial or network structure, group subdivision, and/or mating patterns. In this condition, nonlinear fitness effects are ascribed to collectives, and weighted by a new measure of collective relatedness. For weak selection, this condition can be systematically evaluated by computing branch lengths of ancestral trees. We apply this condition to pairwise games between diploid relatives, and to dilemmas of collective help or harm among siblings and on spatial networks. Our work provides a rigorous basis for extending the notion of "actor", in the study of social evolution, from individuals to collectives.

Collective action against corruption in Western and non-Western countries: cross-cultural implications of the Axiological-Identitary Collective Action Model.

People sometimes protest government corruption, yet our current understanding of why they do so is culturally constrained. Can we separate pancultural factors influencing people's willingness to protest government corruption from factors culturally specific to each socioecological context? Surprisingly little cross-cultural data exist on this important question. To fill this gap, we performed a cross-cultural test of the Axiological-Identitary Collective Action Model (AICAM) regarding the intention to protest against corruption. As a collective action framework, AICAM integrates three classical antecedents of collective action (injustice, efficacy, identity) with axiological variables (ideology and morality). A total sample of 2,316 participants from six countries (Nigeria, Russia, India, Spain, United States, Germany) in a multilevel analysis of AICAM predictions showed that the positive relationship of the intention to protest corruption with moral obligation, system-based anger, and national identification can be considered pancultural. In contrast, the relationships between system justification and perceived efficacy are culturally specific. System justification negatively predicted the intention to participate only in countries with high levels of wealth, while perceived efficacy positively predicted it only in countries perceived as less corrupt. These findings highlight the importance of accounting features of socioecology and separating pancultural from culture-specific effects in understanding collective action.

The synergy effect of multi-country policy actions announced in reaction to global risk: A network structure perspective.

The policy actions of countries reflect adaptive responses of local components within the system to the dynamic global risk landscape. These responses can generate interactions and synergy effects on alleviating the evolution of global risks. Adopting a network perspective, the study proposes a theoretical framework that connects three structural characteristics of policy synergy, namely, synergy scale, alignment intensity, and timing synchronization. Focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic as a typical global risk context, the study finds that policy synergy with a larger scale, stronger alignment intensity, and more synchronized timing has a positive impact on mitigating global risks. The effect of alignment intensity is particularly pronounced when polycentric governance involves 20 countries facing severe risks, whereas the effect of timing synchronization is more significant when the multicenter group comprises more countries. Building upon the concept of an efficient scale of polycentric governance in various dimensions, this study develops a policy synergy index model. Through multiple empirical analyses, this study validates the causal relationship between policy synergy and the future evolution of global pandemic risk. Policymakers can leverage the dynamic changes in the policy synergy to predict future risk situations and implement well-rounded and appropriate policy actions, thereby enhancing the efficacy of the synergy effect of multi-country policy actions for risk governance.

Strengthening rural community water safety planning in Pacific Island countries: evidence and lessons from Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji.

Pacific Island Countries (PICs) collectively have the lowest rates of access to safely managed or basic drinking water and sanitation globally. They are also the least urbanised, have dynamic socioeconomic and increasing climate-linked challenges. Community-based water managers need to respond to variability in water availability and quality caused by a range of hazards. Water Safety Planning (WSP), a widely adopted approach to assessing water supply, offers a risk-based approach to mitigating both existing and future hazards. WSP is adaptable, and making modifications to prescribed WSP to adapt it to the local context is common practice. Within the Pacific Community Water Management Plus research project, we used formative research and co-development processes to understand existing local modifications, whether further modifications are required, and, to develop additional modifications to WSP in Fiji, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. The types of additional local modifications we recommend reflect the unique context of PICs, including adjusting for community management of water supplies and required collective action, community governance systems, levels of social cohesion in communities, and preferred adult-learning pedagogies. Incorporating modifications that address these factors into future WSP will improve the likelihood of sustained and safe community water services in Pacific and similar contexts.

Overview of the Engagement Process to Develop the Future of Cancer Impact (FOCI) Report in Alberta: The Power of Collective Action.

This commentary provides a detailed overview of the extensive stakeholder engagement efforts critical to the development of the Future of Cancer Impact (FOCI) in Alberta report. The overarching aim of the FOCI report was to support informed and strategic discussions and actions that will help key stakeholders in the province prepare for a future with increasing cancer incidence and survival. Employing a comprehensive approach and a diverse range of engagement activities, insights from a wide spectrum of stakeholders were gathered and subsequently used to shape the content of the report. This inclusive process ensured broad representation of perspectives, contributing to a deeper understanding of the complexities in cancer care. The outcome is a robust, consensus-driven report with recommendations set to drive significant transformations within the healthcare system. These efforts highlight the critical role of extensive, inclusive, and collaborative engagement in shaping healthcare initiatives and advancing discussions crucial for the future of cancer care in Alberta.

Identifying American climate change free riders and motivating sustainable behavior.

Free riders, who benefit from collective efforts to mitigate climate change but do not actively contribute, play a key role in shaping behavioral climate action. Using a sample of 2096 registered American voters, we explore the discrepancy between two groups of free riders: cynics, who recognize the significance of environmental issues but do not adopt sustainable behaviors, and doubters, who neither recognize the significance nor engage in such actions. Through statistical analyses, we show these two groups are different. Doubters are predominantly male, younger, with lower income and education, exhibit stronger conspiracy beliefs, lower altruism, and limited environmental knowledge, are more likely to have voted for Trump and lean towards conservative ideology. Cynics are younger, religious, higher in socioeconomic status, environmentally informed, liberal-leaning, and less likely to support Trump. Our research provides insights on who could be most effectively persuaded to make climate-sensitive lifestyle changes and provides recommendations to prompt involvement in individual sustainability behaviors. Our findings suggest that for doubters, incentivizing sustainability through positive incentives, such as financial rewards, may be particularly effective. Conversely, for cynics, we argue that engaging them in more community-driven and social influence initiatives could effectively translate their passive beliefs into active participation.