What the WUNC? Perceptions of WUNC and Social Movement Mobilization

Charles Tilly (1994) provided a four-part framework that outsiders (e.g., targets, potential supporters) use when assessing a social movement: worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment (WUNC). These attributes have been embraced, sometimes implicitly, by most scholars of movement recruitment and mobilization. However, this measure has never been explicitly tested as an evaluative schema used by outsiders in making mobilization decisions. Here, we first develop a measure designed to assess the four factors of the WUNC theory (N = 539). We then use this measure to test how individual variation in this evaluative schema predict actual social movement donation behavior (N = 361). Finally, we consider how movements make identity claims around (1) the issues they focus on and (2) the diversity of the movement's participants affect WUNC and subsequent mobilization attempts (N = 380)."