1) The document summarizes survey results from 296 participants in the London "Time to Act on Climate Change" march in March 2015. 2) The survey found high levels of education and political participation among respondents. Most cited raising awareness and pressuring politicians as motivations for participating. 3) Respondents expressed strong support for reducing emissions but were cynical about the protest's effectiveness. They believed the protest better achieved celebrating diverse climate movements.

1. Produced by George Perry
Caught in the Act of Protest Results
Time to Act on Climate Change
London, 7th March 2015
About the project:
‘Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualising Contestation’ is a European project which aims
to find answers to the questions of who participates in protest, for what reasons, and how
they are mobilised. It is the first project of its kind, attempting to systematically survey
street protests across Europe. This set of data was collected as part of a University of Exeter
module POC204F: The Politics of Protest, a hands-on course that teaches students theories
of protest to then test them using data they have collected themselves on a protest field
trip, delivered by Dr. Clare Saunders. For further information about the project, please see
the project website at www.protestsurvey.eu.
About the survey:
296 participants in the London ‘Time to Act on Climate Change’ March returned a complet-
ed survey to us. In this summary we explore respondents’:
1. Empathy with protest goals and suggested solutions to the problem
2. Biographical characteristics
3. Motivations and sources of information
4. Organisational membership
Photograph from
the March (http://
www.campaigncc.or
g/TimetoAct)

2. Produced by George Perry
What should be done to address climate change?
Tagul.com word cloud of the words used most
frequently in respondents’ responses
The people on the protest:
In terms of employment there were high numbers
of full-time employed people 35%, retired respondents
made up 21%, part-time 14%, self-employed 21%,
unemployed 5% and studying only 6%.
Mostly highly qualified, 40% working towards or having
attained an Undergraduate Degree and 43% having
studied at a Postgraduate level (including Masters
and PhD)
When it comes to gender, 53% of the participants
label themselves as a women and 47% as a man.
The respondents reported a range of different lev-
els of experience of demonstrations, with 25% hav-
ing attended 21 or more demonstrations in the
past, 14% having attended 11 to 20, 23% having
attended 6 to 10 demonstrations, 29% having
attended 1 to 5 demonstrations, and 3% having never attended a demo before. There were
high levels of political participation outside of demonstrations in the last 12 months, 92%
had signed a petition, 90% had deliberately bought products for political, ethical or environ-
mental reasons and 83% had boycotted certain products. Lower participation in more direct
forms of protest, 16% had taken direct action and 13% had participated in a strike.
Protest goals and suggested solutions:
Protest goal 1: World leaders must agree to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions
There was huge support for the importance of this goal 94% thought it was ‘very much’ im-
portant. However, the respondents were quite cynical, only 17% thought the demo was ‘quite’
or ‘very much effective’ at addressing this goal.
Protest goal 2: To grow and celebrate the diverse movement against climate change
This goal had less support , with only 50% believing it to be ‘quite’ or ‘very much’ important.
However, the respondents had much more belief in effectiveness, 60% thought the demo was
‘quite’ or ‘very much effective’ at addressing this goal.

3. Produced by George Perry
Motivation and mobilisation:
Almost all of the motivational factors were very common amongst the respondents, the most
common were to 'raise public awareness', 'pressure politicians to make things change', 'express
my views' and 'express my solidarity' (94%, 94%, 92% and 91% of respondents agreed with these,
respectively). There was a particularly high sense of moral obligation, 77% felt 'morally obliged' to
participate. However, only 40% agreed that they were motivated to attend to ‘defend my inter-
ests'.
The most important information channels for finding out about the protest were ‘Online social
networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter)’ and ‘an organization (magazine, meeting, website, mailing list,
…)’,both 22%. There was a high level on non-response to this question, 17% of respondents left
this question blank. The rest of the respondents were spread thinly across family, friends, other
media and fellow members of an organisation being the most significant with 13%.
Photograph from the march, including some of the various signs and banners present
https://www.flickr.com/photos/david0287/16127305743/in/photostream/
Memberships:
Quite significant sense of unity among respondents, 74% positively identified with the other re-
spondents. The sane can be said about identification with the staging organisations, 69% identi-
fied with any of them.
Participation and membership of organisations was quite high, with active or passive member-
ship of an environmental organisation being the most common (66% ), 45% for political parties,
38% for charity or welfare organisation and 33% for third world, global justice or peace organisa-
tion.

4. Produced by George Perry
Implications for protest organisers:
This data hints towards a severe cynicism within those participating in environmental
demonstrations, only 17% of the respondents thought the demo could have any positive
impact on world leaders and their approach to radically reducing greenhouse gas emis-
sions, similar data analysis could be done with other environmental demo data to support
this. However, the results did show there is a belief in the environmental movement and
the place that demonstrations have in it.
There was a large number of people (17%) who had not provided the most important infor-
mation channels for finding out about the protest were. I believe this could be due to a
multitude of channels of information that people were informed via, meaning the demo
was well advertised, a positive to take away from this data.
It is also interesting to note the generally high levels of political participation, with almost
all of the respondents having participated in a demo before and many political acts having
been carried out by over 90% of the respondents in the past 12 months.
This demonstration was oddly under-represented by young people, 18-25 being the small-
est group and 46-65 the largest . Another underrepresented group are students, only 6% of
respondents were currently studying. This demo seemed to lack pull factors for the young-
er generations which is worrying due to the impact this issue will have on them as an age
group. However, it is also promising as it shows high levels of engagement with this issue
from older generations which so far has been viewed to be lacking. The mechanisms and
channels used to inform and draw in the participants seem to fit those that would reach
young people and students, e.g. social media and other online based media forms. There
was also high levels of information gained through organisations , and organization’s maga-
zine, meeting, website, mailing list, etc was said to have informed 22% of the participants. Along-
side the high levels of organisation participation that young people displayed in the data shows a
conflicting mobilisation landscape. It has not been possible to determine from this data why
young people and students were not better represented at the demo.