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The Power of Youth: Did the "Fridays for Future" Climate Movement Trickle-Up to Influence, Voters, Politicians, and the Media?

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Fabel
  • Matthias Flückiger
  • Markus Ludwig
  • Helmut Rainer
  • Maria Waldinger
  • Sebastian Wichert

Abstract

We study the impact of the “Fridays for Future” climate protest movement in Germany on citizen political behavior and explore possible mechanisms. 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. We exploit cell phone-based mobility data and hand-collected information 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, we show that the local strength of the cli-mate movement led to more Green Party votes in state-level and national-level elections during 2019 and after. We provide evidence 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Fabel & Matthias Flückiger & Markus Ludwig & Helmut Rainer & Maria Waldinger & Sebastian Wichert, 2022. "The Power of Youth: Did the "Fridays for Future" Climate Movement Trickle-Up to Influence, Voters, Politicians, and the Media?," CESifo Working Paper Series 9742, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9742
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    climate protest movement; citizen political behavior;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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