At a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Tai said that he could not say how to sustain the protests into a second month. “You can just go down to the plaza and ask the protesters who have stationed there for so many days, how long do they prepare to stay. I think you can get a good answer.”

But protesters have voiced a range of opinions on the future of their grass-roots movement. Some have wavered from the demand that voters be allowed to put forward candidates for chief executive without vetting from Beijing, while others said that demand, called civic nomination, could not be weakened.

The main protest sites at Admiralty, an area on the south side of Victoria Harbor, and Mong Kok, on the north side, continue to be vibrant, carnival-like gatherings with speeches, performances and art, as well as classroom areas for students. But participants said sustaining the protests was becoming harder, and some said they would accept compromise short of their ultimate demands for free elections.

“It’s about a month now since the whole thing began, and I think the students are tired, and we need a direction for what to do next,” said Steven Chan, a commercial bank worker who said he had regularly come to Admiralty, close to the government offices, where the street occupations began Sept. 28.

“I think politics is a negotiation,” he said, seated outside one of the hundreds of tents occupied by protesters. “Even if there is no civic nomination, there are still ways for Beijing to allow at least one voice from the people in the election” for chief executive, he said.

But many other protesters remain adamantly committed to civic nomination, even though the Chinese government has said the idea is unlawful and politically intolerable.

“I certainly think we need to stay here until we get a real, satisfactory reply on civic nomination,” said Natasha Liang, an 18-year-old high school student at the Admiralty protest site. “Many people feel our government is using a strategy of letting us stay here but ignoring our demands. So we have to stay even longer.”