A0597
Title: The power of youth Fridays for future climate protests and adults political behavior
Authors: Maria Waldinger - LMU Munich - ifo Institut (Germany) [presenting]
Matthias Flueckiger - University of York (United Kingdom)
Helmut Rainer - ifo Institut (Germany)
Abstract: The impact of the Fridays for Future climate protest movement in Germany on citizen political behaviour and explored possible mechanisms is studied. Throughout 2019, large crowds of young protesters, the majority of whom were under voting age, skipped school to demand immediate and far-reaching climate change mitigation measures. Cell phone-based mobility data and hand-collected information are exploited on nearly 4,000 climate protests to construct a spatially and temporally highly disaggregated measure of protest participation. Then, using various empirical strategies to address the issue of nonrandom protest participation, it is shown that the local strength of the climate movement led to more Green Party votes in state-level and national-level elections during 2019 and after. Evidence is provided suggesting that reverse intergenerational transmission of pro-environmental attitudes from children to parents was a key mechanism underlying this effect. In addition, stronger climate-related social media presence by Green Party politicians and increased coverage of environmental issues in local media also appear to have played a role.
