THE PERCEPTUAL BASES OF COLLECTIVE EFFICACY AND PROTEST PARTICIPATION: THE CASE OF PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTS IN HONG KONG

Political efficacy constitutes an important component in various rationalist social psychological models of protest participation which treated the latter as the result of cost-benefit calculations based on people's existing beliefs, norms, and values. This study attempts to contribute to this literature by further explicating the formation and influence of collective efficacy on protest participation. Collective efficacy refers to an individual's perception of whether a collective actor to which the individual belongs is capable of achieving desired outcomes. Theoretically, collective efficacy is treated as a form of cognitive judgments people make by drawing upon and integrating existing information, observations, and perceptions. The empirical analysis, which focuses on a recent wave of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, illustrates how people's perceptions of the political environment contribute to the formation of collective efficacy beliefs. The analysis also examines whether perceptions of the possibility of movement success would mediate and moderate the impact of collective efficacy on protest participation. The results provide an elaboration of the distinctiveness of collective efficacy and its role in protest mobilization.