Berrada, Elias (2023) The Effect of Top-down Involvement on People’s Willingness to Join a Bottom-up Initiative. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Pro-environmental energy measures can be initiated by both municipalities and governments (top-down) or local community projects (bottom-up). Research on collaboration of these two so far has mostly dealt with developing strategies to make joint measures more effective. This paper analyses collaboration of municipalities and locals from a bottom-up perspective and aims to explore the effect of top-down involvement in bottom-up energy initiatives on citizens’ willingness to join. I propose that there is a “cold” pathway towards willingness to join with collective efficacy as an underlying factor, and a “warm” pathway via identity leadership. Municipality involvement would increase collective efficacy, but could hamper identity leadership. A study was set up with participants (N = 351) being asked to imagine a community-based energy project in their neighbourhood. They were randomly allocated to three conditions describing different levels of municipality involvement in said community energy project (support, uninvolved, opposition). The results of the study indicate that municipality support creates the highest willingness to join in people. However, there was no support for the two proposed pathways. Still, both collective efficacy and identity leadership showed significant effects on willingness to join. This paper implies that both municipalities and local movements should aim to collaborate on pro-environmental measures, but more research is necessary for further conclusions and insights.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Jans, L. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Environmental Psychology (EP) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Jul 2023 13:44 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Jul 2023 13:44 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/2638 |
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