Oliver Nobody

8/12/2019 Oliver Nobody

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IFYOU DON'T DO IT, NOBODY ELSE WILL": ACTIVE AND TOKENCONTRIBUTORS TO LOCAL COLLECTIVE ACTION*PAME LAOLI VER

University of W isconsin

It is commo nly assum ed that people participate more in collective action when the ybelieve others will. But local a c ti v i~ ts ften say: I did it becau se nobody elsewould. Investigation of the differences am ong 1456 Detroit residents who werenonmembers, token members, or active members (ei ther currently active or pastleaders) of their neighborhood a ssociations reveals that active m em ber s weresignificantly more pessimistic than token m emb ers a bout the prospects forneighborh ood collective actio n, a finding explained by recent theoretical work oncollective action by Oliver et al. (1984). Other findings are that active m em ber sare more highly educated than token members; that past leaders know more peopleand h ave higher interest in local problem s; and tha t currently active m emb ers h avemore close ties in the neighb orhood , like the neighborhood les s, and are less likely tobe homeowners. Contrasts between members and nonmembers are similar to thosefound in previous resea rch.

When many people share an interest in somecollective good, there are often wide dis-crepancies in the extent to which they contrib-ute to obtaining it. Som e people d o nothing atall, others m ake only small token contributionssuch a s signing a petition o r paying du es, whilea third group contributes substantial amountsof time and effort. What explains these dif-ferences in the willingness to absorb costs inthe provision of local collective goods? Whyare some people willing to make some realcommitment of their time to a cause, whileothers give only token support or lip service?Are those who make the larger commitmentssimply those who are more interested in thecollective goal and have more at stake in itsprovision? Do they have an unusually greatfaith in the willingness of their fellow citizensto back them in their efforts? Are they peoplewith a lot of sp are time on their h and s, lookingfor a way to avoid boredom? Are they power-hungry moguls exploiting community need s a san avenue to their own advancement?There is much less research on the questionof explaining active versus token con tributionsthan on e might expe ct. M uch of this is because

Direct all correspondence to: Pamela Oliver, De-partment of Sociology, University of Wisconsin,Madison, WI 53706.would like to thank Donald Warren for providing acopy of his data, Forrest Grave s and Thomas Flory forhelping with the data transfer, Mary Brulla and MarkNelson for research assistance, and Elizabeth Thom-son , Sara McLanahan, Annamette Sp rensen, Gerald

it is assumed that the motivation to leadershipis relatively unproblematic, that of coursepeople want to be leaders so that they can hav eaccess to power n an organization. But schol-ars of voluntary associations as opposed tolarge bureaucratic organizations) know better .Pearce 1980) comp ared cooperatives whichemployed paid staff with those relying solelyon volun teers. She observed that in employingorganizations, leadership positions were hardto get and were sought after by the partici-pants, while in all-volunteer organizations,leadership positions were easy to get butavoided by the participants. In all-volunteercooperatives, the leaders absorbed high costswith low comp ensating rewards. Rich 1980b)studied a variety of neighborhood organi-zations; the leaders of organizations relyingsolely on volunteers and voluntary contribu-tions absorbed the high cost of their participa-tion while personally realizing relatively littleof the collective goals. In short, the activemembers of all-volunteer local organizationsare frequently underrewarded workh orses whoprovide collective benefits for their often un-appreciative constituencies. Why d o they d o it?This paper reports the differences amongresidents of Detroit who were nonmembers,token members, or active members of theirneighborhood associations. Consistent withprevious research, active members are morehighly educated than token members. But anadditional predictor has not been recognized inprevious research: active members are morepessimistic than token members about the


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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEWsay and with recent theoretical work on collec-tive action.THEORY AND PREDICTIONSThe concept of collective action provides aframework for understanding the common di-lemmas in a wide variety of situations, andmany scholars have treated participation incommunity organizations as a form of collec-tive actiop (for example, Rich, 1980a,b;O'Brien, 1974; Henig, 1982; Wa ndersma n,1981; Smith, 1981; Sharp, 1978; Stinson andSt am , 1976). Th e term collective action re-fers to activities which produce collective orp u b l i c g o o d s , t h a t i s , g o o d s w i t h t h enonexcludability property that their provisionto some members of a group means that theycannot be withheld from others in the group(Olston, 1965: 14). People w ho live in the sam elocal area share common interests which leadto the existence of collective goods, both envi-ronmental, such as floods, wind storms, nox-ious fumes, or commuter traffic, and social,such as garbage collection, stree t repair, policepatrols, and public schools.Neighborhood organizations are explicitlyformed to address these collective goods. Sur-veys of neighborhood organizations find thatthey a ddre ss a wide variety of collective goods ,such as housing, general city servic es, varioustypes of crimes, street safety and traffic prob-lems, recreation, senior citizen needs, educa-tion, unemployment, health services, comm er-cial revitalization, redlining, highway con-struction, drug abuse , planning, tenant issues,and pollution (Green, 1979; National Commis-sion on Neighb orhoods, 1979; Oliver, 1980b).From our theoretical understanding of col-lective action, four general factors can be ex-pected to determine varying levels of involve-ment in neighborhood organizations. The firsttwo ar e the basic economic factors of interestsand costs. Very simply, we expect that largercontributions will com e from people who valueneighborhood collective goods more or whoexperience lower costs from their contribu-tions. A third factor, social ties among groupmembers, is stressed by sociologists such asFireman and Gamson (1979), Tilly (1978), an dGranovetter 973).The fourth general factor concerns predic-tions about others' behavior, specifically pes-simism about the prospects for collective ac-tion by others. In some situations, notably inlarge groups (Olso n, 1965), any individual'scontribution is too small to make a noticeabledifference in the level of the collective good, so

organization, individual contributions do makea noticeable difference (Rich, 1980b) and pre-dictions about others' behavior are relevant.People who believe others will provide thecollective good are motivated to ride free;people who d o not believe oth ers will providethe collective good are motivated to providethe good themselves or d o without.More specific predictions can be developedfor ea ch of these four factors in turn , beginningwith pessimism about others' behavior.Pessimism About Others Collective ActionIt is commonly assumed that people are morewilling to participate in collective actio n if theybelieve that oth ers will. But if you ask som eonewhy he or she agreed to chair a fundraisingdrive or be recording secretary of a local orga-nization, aco m m on answer is: If I don't do it,nobody else will. Tha t is, activists are oftenquite pessim istic, believing it unlikely that the ywill be able to rely on the efforts of theirneighbors.Recent work on collective action by Oliveret al. (1984) argues that there is an interactionbetween beliefs about others' willingness tocontribute to collective action and the charac-ter of the collective good. Optimism aboutcollective action by others makes a person

more w illing to co ntribute when contributionshave an accelerating impact on the collectivegood. But when there are diminishing marginalreturns to contr ibutions , pess imism aboutothers' actions, not optimism, makes a personmore willing to contribute . C ontributions havediminishing marginal return w hen jobs are rel-atively finite, or when the earliest contribu-tions have the biggest impact. Keeping an or-ganization's checkbook, arranging to rentgames for a school fair, or preparing a news-letter have this property: on ce the job is beingdone at all, additional contributions producesmaller (although not zero) increments in thecollective good. If the job is being done, thereis little marginal payoff for helping out, andfree riding is likely.Loc al activism often exhibits this proper ty ofdiminishing marginal returns. Thursz (1972)stresses that successful community organi-zations do not require m ass participation, cit-ing Alinsky's claim that participation by 3 per-cent of a community would ensure suc cess of acomm unity organization. Bolduc (1980) pro-vides a typical case stud y of a neighborhood inwhich only a dozen residents participatedactively in the neighborhood organization al-though it was viewed as a legitimate represen-


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LOCAL COLLECTIVE ACTIONwards, it stands to reason that they are morelikely to make this sacrifice when they believeno one else will.Private incentives (Olson, 1965; Oliver,1980a) could m inimize the im pact of this factor,but it is unusual in voluntary com mun ity actionfor the incentives fo r participation to be largeenough to make a person want to absorb thecosts of involvement. The incentives for activeparticipation in community organizations areusually found to be psychological, includingsocial contacts, deference or respect, self-actualization, learning new skills, or feeling asense of accomplishment (Smith, 1981; Salem ,1978; Rich, 1980b; Sharp, 1978).Interest in the Collective GoodA person's level of interest in the collectivegood should always have a positive effect onparticipating in collective action, but thestrength of this impact may vary. We may dis-tinguish subjective interest, as indicated bystatements of concern about neighborhoodproblems, from objective interest, a s indicatedby demographic characteristics.Concerning subjective in teres ts , severalstudies and literature reviews indicate thatvarious attitudinal measures which tap whatcan be thought of as the person's concernabout the collective good are important pre-dictors of participation in community organi-za t io n s (McKenzie , 1981 Uzzel l , 1980 ;Nane tti, 1980; Parkum a nd Parkum , 1980).However, these studies do not distinguishamong levels of participation. O ne study whichconcerns leaders specifically (Rich, 1980b)argues that psychological incentives, not con-cern about the collective good, are the bestpredictors of the willingness to be a leader in anall-volunteer neighborhood organization.The relevant objective interest for neigh-borhood organizations is being a homeowner.Homeownership is likely to distinguish mem-bers from nonmembers, but is less likely todistinguish active from token members. Thecorrelation with membership is high becauserenters are quite unlikely to belong to neigh-borhood orga nizations, but to o little variance isleft to distinguish active from token members.In theoretical terms, gross-category member-ship is relevant for defining the population atrisk, but not for determining the level of con-tribution a person is willing to make.CostsIt seems obvious that active m embers of local

higher costs than nonmembers, although thedifference may not be great. It is difficult tomake comparisons across people of the costsof action, but it is possible to draw inferencesabout such cos ts by making assum ptions aboutthe n ature of various actions and the effects ofpeople's life circumstances.Education and income One of the mostwell-documented correla tions in social scienceis the positive correlation between socioeco-nomic status and all forms of political or orga-nizational participation (see, e.g., Verba andNie , 1972; Smith and Freedm an, 1972), in-cluding participation in community organi-zations (see Parkum and P arkum , 1980; Vedlitzand V eblen, 1980; Verba an d Nie , 1972; Smithand Freedman, 1972). This finding has beenexplained in cost-benefit terms by many au-

thors, perhaps most forcefully by O'Brien(1974, 1975). The explanation is grounded inthe high costs of participation for the poor.O'Brien argues that poor people are too con-cerned about survival to have time for leisureactivities, that their failure to participate inc o m m u n i t y o r g a n i z a t i o n s i s n o t d u e t oapathy but to an acute case of the free-riderproblem in which the costs of participation faroutweigh the individual's share of the collec-tive good.Psychological costs ar e also relevant in thiscontext. Organizational activity usually re-quires skills that are more common amongeducated people, such as public speaking,Robe rts Rules of Order, understanding techni-cal explanations, or knowing how to call CityHall. This mea ns that the co st of such activitiesis much higher for less-educated people.These cost considerations should hold trueboth for distinguishing members from non-members, and for distinguishing active mem-bers from token members of community orga-nizations.

Free time Fre e or discretionary time is oftenposited as an important factor in collectiveac t ion (McC ar th y an d Z a ld , 1 97 3) . T h estereotype of the community volunteer as abored housewife or retiree is common. Cer-tainly this is a plausible account in cost-benefitterms, since the opportunity cost of an invest-ment of time is lower for a person with morefree time.Since we lack direct measures of free time,we may make plausible inferences about freetime from certain demographic characteristics.Other things being equal, people who are em-ployed full time should have less free time thant h o s e w h o a r e n o t . F r e e t i m e i s a l s odoubtlessly negatively related t o the num ber of


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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEWconsidering recent publicity about the declinein volunteerism as women have entered paidemployment, there is some contrary evidence.Several studies have found positive correla-t ions between employment and voluntarycommunity participation among women, espe-cially less-educated wom en (Flyn n and We bb,1975; Schoenberg, 1980; and several unpub-lished studies cited by Schoenberg, includingSchoenberg and Rosenbaum, 1979; Dab-rowski , 1979; and Holmes, 1979). Thesestudies arg ue that the skills a nd self-confidenceobtained from paid employment are necessaryfor a woman to feel willing to engage in com-munity participation. Having children was apositive predictor of participation in at leastone older study (Wright and Hyman, 1958),although Ahlbrandt and Cunningham (1979)report that it did not predict participation inneighborhood organizations in six Pittsburghneighborhoods.Social TiesIn the substantive literature on neighborhoods,a major theme is the social solidarity or socialintegration within a neighborhood (see, e.g.,Warren and W arren, 1977). It is usually as-sume d that this factor is an important elementin a neighborhood's ability to ac t collectively inresponse to some threat, although this as-sumption is rarely subject to test. Sociologistssuch as Tilly (1978), Fireman and Gamson(1977), Gran ovetter (1973, 1982), and Snow etal. (1980) stress the importance of social tiesfor co llective ac tion. Tilly (1978) distinguishesfeelings of identity or solidarity from networkties. G rano vette r (1973, 1982) and D uff and L iu(1972) distinguish weak ties of acquaintancefrom strong ties of friendship, arguing thatweak ties are important for collective action.Social ties may b e thought of as indicators ofsubjective interest in the neighborhood, asfactors influencing the availability of solidaryincentives for participation in collective action,or as factors reducing the cost of action bymaking communicat ion eas ier . Al l thesetheoretical interpretations yield the same em-pirical prediction, that social ties will generallyhave a positive effect on collective action.None dis t inguishes theoret ical ly betweenactive and token contributions. In this paper,the effects of social ties are assessed withoutattempting to determine the best theoreticalinterpretation of these effects.METHODS AND PROCEDURES

1969 under the direction of Donald Warren;more details on data collection and samplingprocedures may be found in Warren (1975).Twenty-eight elementary school attendanceareas within the central city of Detroit weresampled purposively; sixteen of these wereQver 90 percent black a nd twelve w ere o ver 90percent white. Individuals were randomlysampled within neighborhoods. The 1456 re-sponde nts included in the analysis were of themajority race in their neighborhood and weremissing information on less than six of theoriginal variables in the a nalysis. C ases m issinginformation on a variable were assigned themean fo r interval variables and the median forordinal variables, a proce dure w hich is conser-vative since it tends to a ttenuate corre lations.Measures of Dependent VariablesThe three dependent dummy variables aretypes of participation in neighborhood im-provement organizations: membership, ac-tivism, and leadership. Each reported organi-zational mem bership was classified by ty pe oforganization; neighborhood improv eme nt as-sociation was an original response category.The handful of people who were members ofmore than one neighborhood organization weresimply coded as members, as there were toofew of them to analyze. For each organi-zat ional membership, the respondent wasasked How active have you been in the pastthree years?'The codes active and not activewere entered for each o fl h e years 1966, 1967,1968, and 1969. The variable employed in thepresent analysis contrasts those who wereactive in any of the four y ears with all others.Leade rship was indicated by the answer to thequestion: Hav e you ever held an office o rposition of lead ersh ip in any of these g roup s? Ifyes, which ones?'1Measure of Predictions AboutOthers Collective ActionRespondents were asked to indicate on a five-point scale from certaintly will to certainlywon't their assessm ent of how ready youthink your neighbors would be to help eachothe r in various situations. Tw o were collec-tive: If the principal of the local scho ol wasdoing a very poo r job, how m uch could youcount on your neighbors for help in doingsomething about i t ? 'a n d If the city were toannounce a project that would hurt this neigh-


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LOCAL COLLECTIVE ACTIONborhood, and some of the neighbors tried toorganize a protest, how would the others feelabo ut joining? Th e analy zed variable is anindex created by summing these two items.Measures of Interest in theCollective GoodMembership in the appropriate objective inter-est groups is indicated by whether the personowns or is buying (as opposed to rents) his o rher home.Subjective interest in neighborhood im-proveinent is measured with a composite indexbased on six variables. The first variable is thenum ber of problems the responden t saidexis ted in h is or he r ne ig h b~ rh oo d. ~he otherfive variables are the level of dissatisfactionwith five city services (parks and playgrounds,sports and recreation centers, police protec-tion, garbage collection, schoo ls), each havingfour levels of respo nse from generally satisfiedto very dissat isfied. Principal-axis factoranalysis with varimax rotation identified onlyone significant dimension; all other factorswere of roughly equal weight and unique to avariable. Th e analyzed variable is the weightedregression factor score.CostsEducation and income Education is coded asyears of formal education. Income was as-sessed with the 1960 Census groupings; eachcategory was assigned its midpoint, and thevariable was treated as interval.Free time Respondents employed full timewere contrasted with those who have no paidemployment or only part-time employment.Respondents were coded for the presence orabsence of children under age 18 in the house-hold.Measures of Social TiesThe analyzed variables are three indices tap-ping important dimensions of social ties: posi-tive affect or liking for the neighborhood; the

These were: racial strife; people not keepingtheir houses up; unemployment; wild teenagers; na-tionality or religious conflict; people not knowinghow to get along in the big city; pressure to keep upwith the Joneses; young children not supervisedproperly; it 's no use trying attitude toward solvinglocal neighborhood problems; conflicts betweenolder and younger children; people with strange be-havior; fear of street crim e; militant pressure g roups ;police harassment; traffic and noise; lack of police

number of acquaintances one has in theneighborhood; and the extent of one's closeties of friendship or kinship in the neighbor-hood.T o cre ate these indices, eight variables weresubjected to factor analysis:(1) Th e perso n's liking for th e neighbor-hood, measured wi th a composi te indexcreated by summing four questions. The firstaske d, At y our present time in life, how closeare your neighbors to what you think neighborsshould be like? and was recorded on a four-point scale from very close to not close atall. Th e second asked, In general, how d oyou feel about this neighborhood? with fourresponses ranging.from good to very poor. Thethird and fourth used four responses from likevery much to dislike very m u c h for yourow n block an d the people living rightnearby .2) Another measure of positive affect, howclose the person's neighbors were to theirideal.(3) An index created by summing the re-sponses to questions on the perceived likeli-hood tha t one 's neighbors would eng age in fivekinds of personal helping: keeping an eye onchildren; caring for a child while away for aweek; helping you when sick; keep an eye onthe house for a m onth ; lend you a few dollars.

4) A measure of the perso n's perception ofbeing like other people in the local area. Re-sponden ts were aske d, In general, would yousay you and your neighbors share the same ordifferent views on the following matters: bestway to raise children, religious beliefs, atti-tudes ab out race problem s, political attitudes,goals for children, way to enjoy leisure time,kind of person to have as a friend, how tofurnish a ho use in good taste, how to get aheadin the world. An index was cons tructed bysubtracting the num ber of different answ ersform the number of same answ ers.5) The number of w e a k t ies: the numberof neighbors the person knows well enough sothat you might spend half an hour or so withthem now and then. Respon ses for separatequestions for on this block and in this areabut not on this block were summed.(6) A measure of somewhat stronger ties:how often the person gets together withneighbors at their home or yours, rangingfrom never to daily.7) A m e a s u r e o f t h e s t r o n g t i e s o ffriendship: whether a t least one of the person'sthree closest friends is in the neighborhood.(8) A measure of the strong ties of kinship:


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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEWTh e fac tor analysis reveals only one signifi-cant dimension for these variables, a gener-alized satisfaction with the neighborhood.However, the three-factor solution producedtheoretically meaningful dimensions, so thethree weighted-regression factor scores wereused in the analysis to allow specification ofthe relationship between social ties and localcollective action. The variables which loadedhigh on the first factor were the liking index,whether the neighbors are ideal, the personalhelping index, and the at t i tude-s imilar i tyindex; this factor score is called the Liking forNeighborhood S cale. The m ost im portant vari-able in the second factor is the number ofpeople k nown , with visiting with neighbors andbelieving the neighbors would give personalhelp also loading on this factor; this factor

score is called the Acquaintances Scale. Hav-ing one's closest friends in the neighborhood isthe only variable which loads highly on thethird factor, with having relatives in the neigh-borhood having a mo derate loading; this factorscore is called the Close Ties Scale.Control VariablesRace and gender were con tro l led in theanalysis. There is substantial evidence thatblacks participate more in community organi-zations than whites (Warren, 1975, 1974;Ahlbrandt and Cunningham , 1979; Lond on andHe arn , 1977; Phillips, 1975). In a ddition, m enhave been found to be more active in someareas of community participation and womenin others (Parkum and Parkum, 1980).Preliminary analyses found no significanteffects for age, length of residence in theneighborhood, and marital status, so they areexcluded from the repo rted analy ses. People inthe broadly defined middle ages of 35-60have often been found to be more active (Par-kum an d Parku m, 1980), although Edwa rds(1977) reports finding no age effect on generals o c ia l in v o lv emen t , an d McPh e r s o n an dLock woo d (1980) use time-series dat a to dem-onstrate that the age difference ariscs becausememberships accumulate over t ime, withyounger people having higher rates of member-ship. There is usually a positive correlationbetw en the length of time person has lived ina local area and involvement in communityactivities (Bell and F orc e, 1956; Ro ss, 1972;McKenzie, 1981 Parkum and Parkum, 1980).Th ere is no re ported finding that m arital sta tushas any significant effect on community par-ticipation.

joiners. Other memberships is highly corre-lated with membership in neighborhood orga-nizations but, among members, not with beingactive. The only effect of including this vari-able on the other parameters in any equationreported below is to make income nonsignifi-cant as a predictor of membership.Mode of nalysisSince the dependent variables are dichotomies,probit analysis is an app ropriate sta tistical tool.The contrast between members and nonmem-bers is assessed with the total sample. Thecontrast between token members and activemembers is assessed with the subsample whoare members of the appropriate organization.This mode of analysis plausibly assumes thatpeople are first selected to membership in anorganization an d, once mem bers, face furtherselection for becoming active.RE SU L T STable show s the distributions of the depen-dent variables and their interrelations. Nine-teen percent of the respondents were membersof neighborhood improvement associations atthe time of the survey. Of the members, 22percen t said they had been a leader or officer ofsuch a group, and 27 percent said they hadbeen active in the group in at least one of thepast four years. Th irty percent of the past lead-ers were currently ac tive in their organizations,and 25 percent of those currently active hadbeen leaders.The means and standard deviations for allthe independent variables are given in Table 2.Table 3 shows the coefficients for a probitanalysis of membership and, among members,of the two kinds of active participation. Thefindings for membership are reasonably con-sistent with previous research. Members aresignificantly more likely than nonmembers tobe black, to have higher incomes, to own theirhom es, to score high on the subjective interestscale, to know many of their neighbors, and tobelieve their neighbors would respond collec-tively to a collective problem. The fact thatthose with relatively few friends or relatives inthe neighborhood are more likely to be mem-bers is perhaps inconsistent with the theoreti-cal literature but somewhat consistent withM cC our t's (1977) findings.' Th e negative coef-McCourt's (1977) study of about 3 women in awhite working-class Chicago neighborhood foundthat having one's own parents in the neighborhood


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607O CA L CO L L E CT IV E A CT IO NTable 1. Frequencies and Interrelations Among Types of Participation in Neighborhood Organizations

Percent of Row Grow in Column GrowNumber Current Member Past Leader Currently Active

Total Sample 1456 19% 4% 5%Members 278 22% 27%Leaders 64 97% 30%Currently Active 76 100% 25%

ficient for having children is counte r to Wrightand Hyman's (1958) work, but somewhat con-sistent with free time as an explanation forinvolvement.Turning to the contrast between active andtoken members, only two variables predictboth indicators of active contributions: educa-tion and beliefs about the neighbors' willing-ness to act collectively. First, former leadersand current activists are more highly educatedthan other m em bers. This result is in line withpast researc h, and is probably du e to the kindsof skills educated people acquire which makesuch activities easier (and therefore less co stly)for them. Secondly, both former leaders andcurrent activists are l ss optimistic than othermem bers about the prospe cts for collective ac-tion on th e part of the ir neighbors. P resumablythey do not believe they can free ride on theirneighbors' efforts.

Severa l factors a re different for form er lead-ers than for current activists. Former leadersare more likely than other members to beblack, to score high on the subjective interestscale, and to know m any of their neighbors. Bycontrast, current activists are less likely to behom eow ners, less likely to like their neighbor-hood, and m ore likely to ha ve close social tieswith the neighbors they know (although they

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics fo r IndependentVariablesaStandardVariable Mean Deviation

Race (white 1, black 0) .427 .495Education (in years) 10.535 3.369Income (in 1000~) 9.121 4.493Has Children .593 .491Employed Full Time ,544 ,498Sex (female 1, male 0) ,466 .499Homeowner .736 .441Subjective Interest Scale ,002 ,883Liking forNeighborhood Scale -.001 ,751Acquaintances Scale -.OOl ,651Close Ties Scale ,000 .708Neighbors' Likelihood of

know nonsignificantly fewer of them). Thenegative coefficient on hom eown ership is diffi-cult to explain theoretically and may be noth-ing more than a rand om quirk of these da ta, butit remains whe n con trols for age and length ofresidence in the neighborhood are included.Let us review the results for each set ofpredictors. T he various me asures of social tiesin these data have no consistent effects onactive participation, although they do havesome meaningful patterns. First, membersknow more people than nonmembers, andleaders know more people than other mem-b e r s , c o n s i s t e n t w i t h t h e w e a k t i esarguments. Secondly, members have fewerclose ties in the neighborhood than nonmem-bers, but currently active members have m o rclose ties while generally liking the neighbor-hood less than inactive mem bers. This suggeststhat current activism arises not from a gener-al ized collective neighborhood spir i t , butrather from particularistic ties and, perhaps,even a sense of distance from one's neighbors.Wilson (1973) argues that personalized ex-changes are an important mechanism for pro-ducing local collective goods, although his de-scription may apply more to acquaintancesthan close friends.Interests also have mixed effects on activeparticipation. As expe cted, members are m uchmore likelv than nonmembers to be home-owners anh to score high on the subjectiveinterest scale. How ever, among members, theonly significant positive effect is that of sub-jective interest on having been a leader. Asdiscussed above, homeowners are surprisinglyless likely than oth ers to be currently active asmembers. We may say that interest in the col-lective good seems to move people from doingnothing to doing something, but interests donot seem to be critical for moving people fromdoing less to doing more. There is, however,some indication that people who tak e on lead-ership roles are especially interested in localissues.Costs of participation were not m easured di-rectly, but we assumed that people with moreresources would experience lower opportunity


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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEWTable 3. Probit Analysis of Membership and Active Participation in Neighborhood Organizations

Whole Sample Members of Neighborhood Groups OnlyMem bership Has Been Lea der Currently ActiveStandard Standard StandardEstimate Error Estimate Error Estimate Error

Rac e (white) -0.842* 0.100Education 0.020 0.014Income 0.021* 0.011Ha s Children -0.218* 0.087Full-Time Employ ment 0.008 0.100Gen der (female) 0.070 0.094Homeowner 0.564* 0.108Subjective Inter est 0.177* 0.049Liking Scale 0.095 0.068Acquaintances Scale 0.236* 0.073Close Ties Scal e -0i153* 0.061Neigh Act Coll 0.108* 0.030Constant -2.261* 0.293G-Square 1205.0D.F. 1443

p < .05, one-tailed.

time-not being emp loyed full time an d nothaving children-failed to predict such partici-pation. Members are less likely to have chil-dren than nonmembers, but neither of thesevariables is a significant pred icto r of leader shipor cu rrent activism. A lthough these factors areoften thought to be more salient for women,tests fo r interactions with gender found no sig-nificant coefficients. Furthermore, there was anonsignificant tendency for m en s activism tobe lower when they were employed or hadchildren, but for women s to be higher. Thu s,such trends as there are run counter to theconventional wisdom that community activistsare women who do not have the demands ofjobs or children.Higher-income people have more financialresources, and more highly educated peoplehave cultural resources and skills for organi-zational participation. Income is a weak pre-dictor of me mb ership, while educatio n stronglydistinguishes active from token m em bers. Thissuggests that the salient resource limitingactive participation is the skills involved,rather than money or time.Finally, although members are more op-timistic than nonmembers about the prospectsfo r ne ighborhood co l lec t ive ac t ion , bo thformer leaders and currently active membersare more pessimistic than token membersabout such prospects. As a bit of a check onthe generality of this finding, the same analysiswas performed for parent-teacher associations;the coefficients for form er leadership and c ur-

more skeptical of their neighbors coope rative-ness than token members.CO N CL U SIO N STo summ arize, two factors consistently distin-guish active from token contributors to neigh-borhood organizations: active members aremore highly educated and they are more pes-simistic about the ir neighbors willingness tomake active contr ibutions . Dis t inguishingamong the types of active contributors, leade rsare interested in local issues and know manypeople, while those currently active havenegative feelings about their neighbors in gen-eral but have their closest friends or relatives inthe area.The positive effect of education is wellkno wn , but the significance of activists pes-simism abo ut their neighbors has not been pre -viously recognized and merits further discus-sion.Som e of the pessimism effect may be conse-quence rather than cause. People who get in-volved in community activities often experi-ence frustration when they try to get othersinvolved. Although the numbers involved arevery small, the people in these data who hadbeen leaders in past years but were not activein the current year had mo re pessimistic beliefsabout the prospects for action than other activemembers. Optimism about collective actionmay be due to simple naivete: m any people donot understand the collective-goods dilemma


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LOCAL C OLLECTIVE ACTIONlective dilemma. But whether they are pes-simistic from th e start, o r become so throughexperience, people who mak e active contribu-tions have less faith in the collective spirit oftheir neighbors than people who a re only tokenmembers. This pattern is easily understoodwithin a general collective-action model.Active contributors make a noticeable dif-ference in the provision of the public good.Furthermore, many local collective goods haveth e property of diminishing marginal retu rns , inthat early contributions have much greater im-pact than later contributions of the same size.Under these conditions, rational individualstake account of the likelihood that the collec-tive good will be provided through the effortsof oth ers, and a re less likely to co ntribute themore they believe others will.

There is a kind of parado x of comm unity life.People with the greatest sense of collectiveidentity and positive regard for their neighborsmay not absorb the costs of community ac-tivism because they assum e that som eone elsewill take ca re of the problems. Th e people whoare willing to ab sorb these costs a re often pre-cisely those who have less respect and likingfor their neighbors and more of a belief that ifthey want something done they will have to doit themselves. There is often a real tensionbetween community activists and their com-munities.Of course, in some neighborhoods commu-nity activists are able to mobilize widespreadactivism whenever it is necessary an d there areclose ties between leaders and residents. Butjust as Olson's 1965 work m ade us realize thatcollective action is problematic, so we need torecognize that this is an exception to be ex-plained rather than a natural or likely turn ofevents.

REFERENCESAhlbrandt, R oger S., Jr. , and Jam es V. Cunningham1979 A New Public Policy for NeighborhoodPreservation. New York: Praeger.Bell, W. and M. T Force1956 "Urb an neighborhood types and participa-tion in formal associations." AmericanSociological Review 21:25-34.Bolduc, Vincent L.1980 "Rep resentation and legitimacy in neigh-borhood organizat ions: a case study."

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Edwards, John N.1977 "Age and social involvement." J ourn al ofVoluntary Action Research 6:127-32.Fireman, Bruce and William A. Gamson1979 "Utilitarian logic in the reso urc e mobiliza-tion perspe ctive." Pp . 3-44 in Ma yer N .Zald and John D . McCarthy (ed s.), TheDynamics of Social Movements. Cam-bridge, MA: Winthrop.Flynn, John P, and Gene E. Webb1975 "Wom en's incentives for comm unity par-ticipation in policy issues." Journal of Vol-untary Action Research 4:137-46.Granovetter, Mark1973 "The streng th of weak ties." AmericanJou rna l of Sociology 78: 1360-80.1982 "The strength of weak ties: a networktheory revisited." Pp . 105-30 P ete r V.Marsden and Nan L in ( eds . ) , Soc i a lStructure and Network Analysis. BeverlyHills, CA: Sage.Green, Gerson1979 "Who's organizing the neighborhood?Community organizations: a report on theirstructure, finance, personnel, issues andstrategies." Office of Com mu nity Anti-Crime Programs, Law Enforcement Assis-tance Administration. Superintendent ofDocuments stock no. 027-000-00783-0.Henig, Jeffrey R.1982 "Neighborhood respo nse to gentrification:cond itions of mobilization." Urb an AffairsQuarterly 17:343-58.

Holmes, Sandra1979 "Middle-class wom en, paid work and vol-unte er work." U npublished ma nuscript,Department of Sociology, Washington Uni-versity.London, Bruce and John H earn1977 "Ethn ic commu nity theory of black socialand political participation: additional sup-port." Social Scien ce Quarterly 57:883-91.McCarthy, John D. and Mayer N. Zald1973 The Trend o f Soc i a l Movemen t s i nAmerica: Professionalization and ResourceMobil izat ion. Morristown, NJ: GeneralLearning Press.McCourt, Kathleen1977 Working Class Women and Grass RootsPolitics. Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress.McKenzie, W. M.1981 "Citizen participation: what motivates it."A u s t r a l i a n J o u r n a l o f S o c i a l I s s u e s16:67-79.McPherson, J. Miller and William G. Lockwood1980 "The long itudinal study of voluntary asso-c i a t i o n m e m b e r s h i p s : a m u l t i v a r i a t eanalysis." Journal of Voluntary Action Re-search 9:74-84.Nanetti, Raffaella Y.1980 "From the top down: government promotedcitizen participation." Journ al of VoluntaryAction Re sea rch 9: 149-64.


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theory of the critical mass, I." Unpublishedmanuscript. Department of Sociology, Uni-versity of Wisconsin.Olson, Mancur1965 The Logic of Collective Actio n. Camb ridge,MA: Harvard University Press.Parkum, Kurt H. and Virginia Cohn Parkum1980 "Citizen participatio n in com mun ity plan-ning and decision making." Pp. 153-67 inDavid Horto n Sm ith, Jacqueline M acaulayand Associates (eds.), Participation in So-cial and Political Activities. San F rancis co:Jossey-Bass.Pearce, Jone L.1980 "Apathy or self interest? The volunteer'savoidance of leadership roles." Journal ofVoluntary Action Research 9%-94.Phillips, W. M., Jr .1975 "Edu cationa l policy, comm unity participa-tion, and race." Journal of Negro Edu cation44:257-67.Rich, Richard C.1980a "A political-economy ap proac h to the studyof neighborhood organizations." AmericanJournal of Political Science 2439-92.

1980b "Th e dyna mics of leadersh ip in neighbo r-hood organizations." Social Science Quar-terly 60570-87.Ross, J .1972 "Toward a recon structio n of voluntary as-sociation theory." American SociologicalReview 22:315-26.Salem, G. W .1978 "Maintaining participation in communityorganizations." Journal of Voluntary Ac-tion Re sea rch 7: 18-27.Schoenberg, Sandra P erlman

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Sharp, Elaine1978 "Citizen organizations in policing issuesand crime prevention: incentives for par-ticipation." Journal of Voluntary ActionResearch 7:45-58.Smith, Constance and Anne Freedman1972 Voluntary Associations: Pers pectiv es onthe Literature. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.Smith, David Horton1981 "Altruism, volu nteers, and volunteerism."Journal of Voluntary Act ion Research10:21-36.Sno w, David A., Louis A . Zurcher, Jr. , and SheldonEkland-Olson1980 "Social netwo rks and social mo vem ents: amicro-structural ap proac h to differential re-cruitment." American Sociological Review45:787-801.Stinson, Thomas F. and Jerome M. Stam

1976 "Toward an economic model of volun-teerism: the case of participation in localgovernment." Journal of Voluntary ActionResearch 552-60.Thursz, Daniel1972 "Comm unity participation: should past beprologue?" American Behavioral Scientist15:733-48.Till y, Cha rles1978 Fro m Mobilization to Revolution. Reading,MA: Addison-Wesley.Uzzell, David L.1980 "Conflicting explanatio ns of participatorygroup membership." Journal of VoluntaryAction Research 9:203-210.Vedlitz, Arnold and Eric P. Veblen1980 "Voting and contac ting: two form s ofpolitical participation in a suburban com-m u n i t y . " U r b a n A f f a ir s Q u a r t e r l y16:31-48.Verba, Sidney and Norman H. Nie1972 Par t ic ipa t ion in Amer ica . New York:Harper Row.Wandersman, Abraham1981 "A fram ewo rk of participation in comm u-nity organizations." Journ al of Applied Be-havioral Science 17:27-58.Warren, Donald 11974 "The linkage between neighborhood andvoluntary association patterns: a compari-son of black and white urban populations."Journal of Voluntary Act ion Research3:l-17.1975 Black Neighborhoods: An Assessm ent ofCommunity Power. Ann Arbor: The Uni-versity of Michigan Press.Warren, Rachelle B. and Donald I. Warren1977 Th e Neighborhood Organizer's Han dbo ok.Notre Dame, IN: The University of NotreDame Press.Wilson, James Q.1973 Political Organizations. New York: BasicBooks.Wright , C. R. and H. Hyman


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You have printed the following article:

"If You Don't Do it, Nobody Else Will": Active and Token Contributors to Local CollectiveAction

Pamela Oliver

American Sociological Review, Vol. 49, No. 5. (Oct., 1984), pp. 601-610.

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References

Urban Neighborhood Types and Participation in Formal Associations

Wendell Bell; Maryanne T. Force

American Sociological Review, Vol. 21, No. 1. (Feb., 1956), pp. 25-34.

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The Strength of Weak Ties

Mark S. Granovetter

The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 6. (May, 1973), pp. 1360-1380.

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Rewards and Punishments as Selective Incentives for Collective Action: Theoretical

InvestigationsPamela Oliver

The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 85, No. 6. (May, 1980), pp. 1356-1375.

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Educational Policy, Community Participation, and Race

W. M. Phillips, Jr.

The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 44, No. 3, The Continuing Crisis of Urban Education.(Summer, 1975), pp. 257-267.

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A Political-Economy Approach to the Study of Neighborhood OrganizationsRichard C. Rich

American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 24, No. 4. (Nov., 1980), pp. 559-592.

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Some Trends in the Community Participation of Women in Their Neighborhoods

Sandra Perlman Schoenberg

Signs, Vol. 5, No. 3, Supplement. Women and the American City. (Spring, 1980), pp. S261-S268.

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Social Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to DifferentialRecruitment

David A. Snow; Louis A. Zurcher, Jr.; Sheldon Ekland-Olson

American Sociological Review, Vol. 45, No. 5. (Oct., 1980), pp. 787-801.

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Voluntary Association Memberships of American Adults: Evidence from National SampleSurveys

Charles R. Wright; Herbert H. HymanAmerican Sociological Review, Vol. 23, No. 3. (Jun., 1958), pp. 284-294.

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