Protest memories and individual persistence: examining participants’ intention to remember a movement under democratic backsliding

Researchers have paid increasing attention to the movement-memory nexus and recognized the role memories play in sustaining movement continuity. This article focuses on the role of individuals’ intention to remember in the movement abeyance process. Defined as a subjective emphasis on the need to remember a protest movement for the purpose of preserving the movement’s legacy and significance into the future, intention to remember is posited as part of a cluster of mutually reinforcing beliefs, attitudes, and behavior that sustain individual movement engagement in times of abeyance. Empirical analysis of a survey of participants in Hong Kong’s Anti-ELAB Movement, conducted three years after the protests ended, supports the arguments by showing that intention to remember positively relates to persistent actions, movement evaluation, collective efficacy, and collective identification. Nonetheless, intention to remember is related only to recall of protest events involving violence against protesters, but not to recall of peaceful protest events.