'Norm-Consistent Conspiracy Theory & Collective Action - Study 2'
(AsPredicted #139,287)
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1) Have any data been collected for this study already?
No, no data have been collected for this study yet.

2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study?
Which thoughts and motivations correlate with support for disruptive climate protest?
H: Stronger (a) dissatisfaction with the governmental climate policies and (b) belief in a climate policy conspiracy predict higher support for disruptive climate protest. (c) Both relationships are stronger the more individuals hold a politically left orientation.
RQ: Does conspiracy mentality relate to support for disruptive climate protest – beyond dissatisfaction, climate policy conspiracy belief, and political orientation?

3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured.
Support for disruptive protest is measured using nine items (e.g., "I support the decision of some climate activists to engage in civil disobedience for more climate protection").

4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to?
There is no manipulation. Predictors are measured as follows:
The dissatisfaction with the governmental climate policies will be assessed with five reversed coded statements used in an earlier study on this topic (e.g., " In current politics, climate protection receives sufficient attention."). In addition, five regular (=non-reversed coded) statements expressing dissatisfaction will be used (e.g., "Climate policies are more tailored to the here and now than to what is necessary due to climate change.").
The climate policy conspiracy belief will be assessed using nine items (e.g., "Discussions between politics and business on climate issues take place behind closed doors").
To measure conspiracy mentality, we will use the scale by Imhoff and Bruder (2014), which consists of 12 items (e.g., "Politicians and other leaders are only puppets of the powers behind them").
Political orientation is assessed with one item (ranging from left to right).

5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis.
All indices will be computed as mean of responses to all items of a scale that have an item-total correlation > .2.
For the variable dissatisfaction with the governmental climate policies, we will compute one index from the five reversed coded items that served as indicator of dissatisfaction in a preceding study. A second index will be computed as mean of all 10 items (five reversed coded and five regular), unless an EFA (PCA) with all 10 items, extraction of two factors, and varimax rotation finds that the reversed coded and the regular items load on two separate factors and the resulting indices have r < .6. In this case the second index will be computed from the five regular items stating dissatisfaction.
To test Hypotheses a and b, we will calculate four multiple regression analyses. In each analysis, support for disruptive protest will serve as the criterion. In the first two analyses, we will include dissatisfaction (index 1 or index 2, respectively), belief in climate policy conspiracy, political orientation, and conspiracy mentality as predictors. In the second pair of analyses, the interaction between political orientation and the three other predictors (product of grand mean-centered variables) will also serve as predictors to test Hypothesis c.

6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations.
To be included, participants need (a) to be at least 18 years old, (b) be fluent in German, and (c) agree that their data is used for scientific purposes.
Participants will be excluded if they fail one of two attention checks (i.e., do not mark a specific response alternative) and if they indicate that they participated more than once.

7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size?
No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined.
Based on a power analysis for single regression coefficients in a multiple regression with 7 predictors (power of .80, alpha-error probability .05, minimum effect size in previous study: r = .15, test of hypothesis c). We aim at having a sample size of N = 316 after exclusion of participants. Given the strict exclusion criteria, we will collect 500 observations.
Data collection will be stopped after 10 days in case the desired sample size will not be reached (earlier).

8) Anything else you would like to pre-register?
(e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?)
For exploratory purposes we also assess three items capturing tit-for-tat with the government (e.g., "Protest as the one by the last generation is appropriate, because policy makers to not live up to their responsibility regarding climate change.") as a potential mediator between climate conspiracy belief and support for disruptive protest. Given the cross-sectional design, we feel able to only explore this mediation.