Sierra club study shows who become activists

Abstract

Members of active publics who join activist groups help to create constraints on organizational autonomy that are the major reason for public relations problems and programs to solve them. This paper reports the results of a study of members of the Sierra Club that was designed to help provide a link between two theories of public relations: a situational theory of publics and an organizational theory of the relationship between environments and the public relations behavior of organizations. Previously, the situational theory has been used to identify actively communicating publics who are most likely to develop organized cognitions about issues and to engage in behaviors related to those issues. This study extends the theory by asking whether members of some publics (all-issues, apathetic, single-issue, or involving-issue-only publics) are more likely to join an activist group than members of other publics. It then asks what incentives (material, solidary, purposive, or selective incentives) motivate members of active publics to become activists. Results confirmed the basic hypotheses of the situational theory. They also showed that members of the most active public, the all-issue public, are most likely to join an activist group and to participate actively in that group. Members of the active, all-issues public also to join an activist group for purposive, political actions and policies.