RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIALS IN PROTESTS?! POW 1/?

"Persistent Political Engagement: Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements " by Leonardo Brusztyn and numerous coauthors came up while doing some research this week, and is certainly now the paper of the week (POW).

A copy of the abstract, the thrilling bits of which are in bold: 

"We test whether participation in one protest within a political movement increases subsequent protest attendance, and why. To identify an effect of protest participation, we randomly, indirectly incentivize Hong Kong university students into participation in an antiauthoritarian protest. To identify the effects of social interactions, we randomize the intensity of this treatment across major-cohort cells. We find that experimentally-induced protest participation is significantly associated with protest attendance one year later, though political beliefs and preferences are unaffected. Persistent political engagement is greatest among individuals in the cells with highest treatment intensity, suggesting that social interactions sustained persistent political engagement."

A working paper version that is publicly available through Google may be found below.