Emotional protesters: Protest out of anger or stay home in fear?

How do repressive state tactics used in response to protests affect individuals’ willingness to continue protesting? Particularly, does repression increase or decrease individual protesters’ willingness to continue participating in a protest movement once the protest is already underway? Prominent theories of collective action tend to explain how state repression impacts protest differently. I address this puzzle and aim to contribute to the literature on protest by explaining the effects of different forms of repression on protest continuity through protesters’ emotions as mediating factors. I argue that soft repression in the first round of a protest movement angers protesters and provokes them to continue protesting in the subsequent stage of the event. Hard repression leads to fear and deters participation in the second round. I collect novel data from Argentina and the United States via two different online survey experiments. The results partially support the theoretical expectations.