Benefiting from Culture Wars: Resource Mobilization in Polarized Issue Domains

Organizations engaging with contested social issues may struggle to mobilize resources due to disapproval from hostile audiences. Yet, some may benefit from increased support from sympathetic audiences, leaving unclear when such support will outweigh opposition. We propose that variation in audience reactions depends partly on how contestation is structured. We theorize that ideological polarization—the extent to which opposing stances on an issue sort along ideological lines—may enhance resource mobilization in contested issue domains. As polarization increases, contested issues pit opposing identities against each other and heighten threats to sympathetic audiences’ worldviews. New ventures in more polarized domains may attract greater support as sympathetic audiences respond by investing in aligned ventures, a mechanism we term “compensatory investment.” This relationship strengthens under conditions that heighten identity threat: when issues are highly salient, making them central political battlegrounds, and when audiences on both sides rely on core moral foundations to evaluate the issue, so that disagreements are experienced as moral violations. Analyses of U.S.-based Kickstarter campaigns (2009–2020) support our predictions and provide evidence consistent with compensatory investment. Our study highlights polarization as a key source of issue heterogeneity, introduces the mechanism of compensatory investment, and specifies when polarization enhances resource mobilization.