Differential Protest Participation Among Fridays for Future Climate Protesters: Relational Versus Objective and Subjective Determinants

This article focuses on differential participation amongst climate change protesters and examines the links between objective, subjective, and relational determinants for shaping their differential levels of political activism. We examine to what extent occasional protesters differ from more committed participants and which explanatory factors are most relevant. How do climate change demonstrators differ in terms of their sociodemographic profiles, political values, and relational dynamics, including the role of associational memberships, networks, and recruitment channels? Which factors are more important to account for differential protest participation? We aim in particular to understand relational dynamics of differential participation and how they interact with both objective and subjective determinants of protest participation to explain different levels of political engagement. To do so, we explore the role of relational factors for activating the impact of objective and subjective factors, in terms of the mechanisms linking objective and subjective factors to heightened engagement levels. We find an impact of all of the objective, subjective, and relational determinants of differential protest participation and, importantly, that relational aspects can act to amplify the effect of both objective and subjective factors. This suggests that future studies should continue to account for the interactions of these factors.