16:00 - 17:30
Panel Session 2
Room: Zoom
Moderator/s:
Laron K Williams
Thermostatic Environmentalism: Extreme Weather Events and Vote for Green Parties in Western Europe.
Piero Stanig 1, Roman Hoffmann 2, Raya Muttarak 2, 3, Jonas Piesker 4
1 Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University, Milan
2 Vienna Institute of Demography/Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, Vienna
3 School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich
4 International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg

Evidence exists that experience of natural disasters and extreme weather affects attitudes and concerns about climate change, and increases support for climate policies. Yet, less evidence exists about how this in turn affects voting behavior. This study exploits a newly constructed georeferenced municipal-level dataset of European Parliament election results in 11 western European countries from 1994 to 2019 to explain the surge in public support for Green parties. We combine georeferenced data on floods and other extreme weather events, obtained from the European Environmental Agency and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU-TS 3.25), with election returns data. We estimate models for Green party vote shares in each European Parliament election as a function of temperature anomalies and of the distance of the municipality from the recorded location of a flood. Given that the occurrence of an extreme natural event is plausibly exogenous with respect to voting behavior, we can estimate reduced form (intention to treat) causal effects of climate-change related events on support for Green parties. We also use data on climate concern from the Eurobarometer, locating respondents at the level of NUTS2 regions and attributing to them their region’s weather and flood variables. We find that experiences of natural disasters and extreme weather events trigger support for Green parties. In addition, corroborating the reduced-form evidence, we find that individuals who reside in regions more affected by temperature anomalies and floods are more likely to consider climate change and environmental issues as policy priorities.


Reference:
Th-P2-03
Session:
Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behaviour
Presenter/s:
Piero Stanig
Topic:
EU Politics
Presentation type:
Oral presentation
Room:
Zoom
Moderator/s:
Laron K Williams
Date:
Thursday, 18 June
Time:
16:30 - 16:45
Session times:
16:00 - 17:30

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