This chapter examines how and why accommodating informal norms vary across regions, social groups, and time based on four cases of mobilization against garbage incineration. Holding the contentious issue—environmental protection—in all cases constant, it illustrates that factors including identity politics, local political climates, and distinctions in the resources that protesters have (such as media access and social connections) matter in the application of accommodating informal norms. For instance, compared to the urban middle class, rural peasants have fewer resources, which reduces officials’ incentive to comply with the informal norms and thus leaves the dissidents with a narrower space for protest. Moreover, because police officers largely live outside of villages, they are less likely to identify themselves as rural residents and probably feel less empathy toward villagers than toward urbanites. Yet if peasants manage to demonstrate the solidarity of their community, they can create more space for resistance as well. For a single protest, the protest space can expand or contract over time, depending on the dynamic engagement between the state and protesters.