Intensification or diversification: responses by anti health-pass entrepreneurs to French government announcements

Abstract

We study the extent to which French entrepreneurs mobilized in an online collective action against the generalization of the health-pass policy in summer 2021. We document the dynamics of registrations on the website Animap.fr where entrepreneurs could claim they would not check the health-pass of their clients. We first note an over-representation of complementary and alternative medicine practitioners among the mobilized people. We also suggest that professionals related to the touristic industry mobilized on the website. Second, we show that the government announcements led to an increase in the mobilization. However, they did not affect the diversity of the entrepreneurs joining the action. This lack of diversity may have restricted the pool of potential participants as well as limited the identification of the “public opinion” to the mobilization.