Factors Contributing to Social Justice Action: A Scoping Review of the Published Literature

Working toward social justice is an urgent, cross-disciplinary endeavor requiring a range of invested actors. Research has demonstrated, however, that motivating people to work toward social justice is quite complicated, and there often exists a gap between possessing social justice values and engaging in social justice action. As a result, many scholars have called for increased research to better understand individual engagement in social justice action. Thus, the aim of this scoping review was to investigate the factors and processes that contribute to social justice action and how they have been studied in the empirical literature. Selection criteria limited articles to empirical studies on the influences, factors, or processes contributing to or interfering with social justice action. The search strategy yielded 70 articles from 2000–2023 to be included in the study. Findings indicated that studies largely employed survey designs, with some qualitative work. Social justice action was inconsistently defined and measured between studies, and, at times, there was conflation between the value specificity of social justice action and the value unspecified way it was measured. Studies found many factors influential in the development of social justice action, but none appeared both necessary and sufficient for engagement to occur. Findings suggested that the development of social justice action is likely the result of an interactive process between multiple intrapersonal and environmental factors. Further qualitative and longitudinal research can help parse out the action development process and explore personal and environmental barriers to engagement. Validation and standardization of measures is also recommended.