Free-Riding for Future: Field Experimental Evidence of Strategic Substitutability in Climate Protest

TL;DR

This study provides field experimental evidence that individuals' decisions to participate in climate protests are strategically substitutable, with increased beliefs about others' participation reducing one's own likelihood to protest.

Contribution

It offers causal evidence of strategic substitutability in protest participation through a randomized informational intervention and control function estimation.

Findings

Participation is a strategic substitute: higher belief decreases protest likelihood.

A one percentage-point increase in belief reduces participation probability by 0.67 percentage points.

Experimental design isolates causal effect of beliefs on protest decisions.

Abstract

We test the hypothesis that protest participation decisions in an adult population of potential climate protesters are interdependent. Subjects (n=1,510) from the four largest German cities were recruited two weeks before protest date. We measured participation (ex post) and beliefs about the other subjects' participation (ex ante) in an online survey, used a randomized informational intervention to induce exogenous variance in beliefs, and estimated the causal effect of a change in belief on the probability of participation using a control function approach. Participation decisions are found to be strategic substitutes: a one percentage-point increase of belief causes a .67 percentage-point decrease in the probability of participation in the average subject.