Explanatory Factors of Political and Citizen Participation in Online Consultations

Since the turn of the millennium, political and civic participation has become increasingly digitized. In Spain, this process has intensified since the 2010s, starting with the activities of the 15M movement and the sovereignty process in Catalonia. The end of the cycle of protests, beginning in 2015, has led to the institutionalization of the indignation movement through access to government in numerous municipalities. Thus, the digital participatory innovations experienced in the social and protest spheres have translated into various forms of non-electoral online participation at the local institutional level and in political parties. The changes described above have been accompanied by increased academic interest. However, the knowledge generated continues to present limitations and contradictory results regarding the effects and impact of digital channels on political and citizen participation. In this sense, the central objective of our work will be to deepen our understanding of the factors that explain participation (or no) through digital consultations or voting in Spain. To this end, we will use data collected through a cross-sectional survey designed and conducted by the INE (2024), from which we will extract a total of eight independent or explanatory variables related to two analytical categories: level of resources and sociodemographic profile. To test the explanatory hypotheses related to the dichotomous variable “participation in online consultations,” we will use various statistical tests, such as t-test analysis and/or logistic regression.