IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v60y1989i3p241-257.html

Putting the puzzle together: Why people join public interest groups

Author

Listed:
  • Lawrence Rothenberg

Abstract

Why people join organizations, especially public interest groups, has been an unsolved puzzle. In this analysis, choice-based probability methods are employed to combine data from the 1980 National Election Study with comparable information about Common Cause members and to estimate models of the participation calculus that put the pieces of the puzzle together. The results demonstrate the primary importance of political interest and policy preferences for the membership choice. Citizens who are politically interested and have preferences that roughly match an organization's reputation find that associational membership has both greater benefits and lower costs for them than it does for others. Variations in the costs of communication — to the degree that they can be measured — are unimportant for the joining decision. An ability to pay is also irrelevant, regardless of educational attainment and despite members' high incomes. Organizational leaders deliberately keep the costs of membership low relative to most citizens' ability to pay; this encourages potential contributors to join in order to learn about the organization. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Suggested Citation

  • Lawrence Rothenberg, 1989. "Putting the puzzle together: Why people join public interest groups," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 241-257, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:60:y:1989:i:3:p:241-257
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00159396
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00159396
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00159396?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Barke & William Riker, 1982. "A political theory of regulation with some observations on railway abandonments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 73-106, January.
    2. George J. Stigler, 1974. "Free Riders and Collective Action: An Appendix to Theories of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 5(2), pages 359-365, Autumn.
    3. James Kau & Paul Rubin, 1979. "Public interest lobbies: membership and influence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 45-54, March.
    4. Grafton, Carl, 1984. "A Tale of Two Agencies: A Comparative Analysis of the General Accounting Office and the Office of Management and Budget. By Frederick C. Mosher. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. Pp. xxvi + 219. $22.50.)," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(4), pages 1115-1116, December.
    5. Manski, Charles F & Lerman, Steven R, 1977. "The Estimation of Choice Probabilities from Choice Based Samples," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(8), pages 1977-1988, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Lowry, 1998. "Religion and the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3), pages 223-240, March.
    2. Ambrus, Attila & Azevedo, Eduardo M. & Kamada, Yuichiro & Takagi, Yuki, 2013. "Legislative committees as information intermediaries: A unified theory of committee selection and amendment rules," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 103-115.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:ags:aesdoc:207750 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Robert Lowry, 1998. "Religion and the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3), pages 223-240, March.
    3. Steimetz, Seiji S.C. & Brownstone, David, 2005. "Estimating commuters' "value of time" with noisy data: a multiple imputation approach," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 865-889, December.
    4. Aseem Kaul & Jiao Luo, 2018. "An economic case for CSR: The comparative efficiency of for‐profit firms in meeting consumer demand for social goods," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(6), pages 1650-1677, June.
    5. Lurkin, Virginie & Garrow, Laurie A. & Higgins, Matthew J. & Newman, Jeffrey P. & Schyns, Michael, 2017. "Accounting for price endogeneity in airline itinerary choice models: An application to Continental U.S. markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 228-246.
    6. Esmeralda Ramalho, 2004. "Covariate Measurement Error in Endogenous Stratified Samples," Economics Working Papers 2_2004, University of Évora, Department of Economics (Portugal).
    7. Steven Berry & James Levinsohn & Ariel Pakes, 2004. "Differentiated Products Demand Systems from a Combination of Micro and Macro Data: The New Car Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 68-105, February.
    8. Lahiri, Kajal & Yang, Liu, 2013. "Forecasting Binary Outcomes," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1025-1106, Elsevier.
    9. JOHN McMILLAN, 1979. "The Free‐Rider Problem: A Survey," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 55(2), pages 95-107, June.
    10. Sarlin, Peter & von Schweinitz, Gregor, 2021. "Optimizing Policymakers’ Loss Functions In Crisis Prediction: Before, Within Or After?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 100-123, January.
    11. Nicolas Jacquemet & Stéphane Luchini & Jason F. Shogren & Verity Watson, 2019. "Discrete Choice under Oaths," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 19007, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    12. Dirk Alboth & Anat Lerner & Jonathan Shalev, 2001. "Profit Maximizing in Auctions of Public Goods," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 3(4), pages 501-525, October.
    13. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 1999. "Income gains to the poor from workfare - estimates for Argentina's TRABAJAR Program," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2149, The World Bank.
    14. Robert Tollison, 2012. "The economic theory of rent seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 73-82, July.
    15. Daniel McFadden, 2001. "Economic Choices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 351-378, June.
    16. Lancaster, Tony & Imbens, Guido, 1995. "Optimal stock/flow panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1-2), pages 325-348.
    17. Soda, Giuseppe & Zaheer, Akbar & Sun, Xiaoming & Cui, Wentian, 2021. "Brokerage evolution in innovation contexts: Formal structure, network neighborhoods and knowledge," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(10).
    18. Emanuel Wittberg & Gissur Ó. Erlingsson & Karl Wennberg, 2024. "Does local government corruption inhibit entrepreneurship?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 775-806, February.
    19. Harold Mulherin, J., 2007. "Measuring the costs and benefits of regulation: Conceptual issues in securities markets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2-3), pages 421-437, June.
    20. Albanese, Andrea & Cockx, Bart & Dejemeppe, Muriel, 2024. "Long-term effects of hiring subsidies for low-educated unemployed youths," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    21. Pereira, Pedro & Ribeiro, Tiago & Vareda, João, 2013. "Delineating markets for bundles with consumer level data: The case of triple-play," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 760-773.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:60:y:1989:i:3:p:241-257. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.