Impact of Social Movements on Policy Reforms and Legislative Change in Malaysia: The Mediating Roles of Public Awareness and Political Responsiveness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66348/hsr.26.a106Keywords:
Social movements; Policy reform; Legislative change; Public awareness; Political responsiveness; Digital activism; MalaysiaAbstract
The social movements have come to play a significant role in influencing public discourse, politics and institutional change. Yet, there is still a lack of understanding on how social movements are able to influence policy reform and legislative change, especially in Malaysia. This study focuses on the impact of social movement effectiveness on policy and legislative change, mediated by public awareness and political responsiveness and moderated by digital activism. The study adopts a social movement and political process and institutional approach and provide an integrated conceptual perspective to examine and test the proposed relationships through survey data obtained from respondents in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to evaluate the measurement and structural models. The results suggest that the effectiveness of a social movement has positive impacts on public awareness, political responsiveness and policy and legislative change. Public awareness and political responsiveness are also key to policy and legislative change. In addition, both variables are found to play a significant role in the social movement's effectiveness in bringing about policy and legislative change and the sequential relationship from public awareness to political responsiveness is significant. The results also show that digital activism played a positive moderation effect between the effectiveness of the social movement and the awareness among the public, indicating that digital platforms help social movements to better attract the public attention. Overall, the study posits that social movements can play a role in significant policy and legislative shifts, not only through direct mobilisation, but also through a process of ‘public awareness' and ‘institutional responsiveness'. The study adds to the literature by combining mobilisation, cultural, political and digital aspects of influence of social movements and offers policy recommendations for enhancing constructive civic engagement and responsive governance in Malaysia.
Received: 2026-07-11 | Revised: 2026-09-29 | Accepted: 2026-09-30 | Published: 2026-09-30
Declarations
Ethics and Guidelines: The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The ethical approval specifically covers the research procedures and data collection activities conducted for this study.
Consent to participate: Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection. Consent was obtained using a standardized written form, signed by each participant before participation in the survey.
Consent to publish: The authors have provided consent to publish.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Data availability statement: Data will be made available on reasonable request from the corresponding author.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Clinical Trial Number: Not Applicable.
Declaration of using generative AI: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used ChatGPT in order to correct the grammatical errors. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the content of the published article.
Author Contributions: A.S.A. and M.M.U.: Conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft preparation, writing—review and editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Data Availability Statement
Data will be made available on reasonable request from the corresponding author.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Aliana Shazma Amir, Md Mahtab Uddin (Author)
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