Fridays for Future’s Decentralized Strategy Motivates More People

Photo: Unsplash/Tom Seger Climate protest - Whether or not people choose to attend a climate protest partly depends on its expected size. When they expect a larger protest, they are less likely to take part - as Universität Hamburg's Cluster of Excellence for climate research (CLICCS) shows in the journal Nature Climate Change. Mass protests are an important motivator for politicians to implement ambitious climate policy. But what determines whether a protest movement grows or dwindles? The study at hand uses the example of the global climate strike from 2019 to show that, for many people in Germany, their participation depends on how many people they expect to attend a given demonstration. Accordingly, Fridays for Future's strategy - organizing multiple local protests at the same time, instead of one massive centralized event - can successfully motivate more people. On the basis of a three-stage survey involving more than 1,500 respondents, Dr. Johannes Jarke-Neuert, Prof. Grischa Perino and Henrike Schwickert were able to show for the first time the connection between the expected number of demonstrators and the willingness to personally join in. -When the demonstrations are larger, for some people the -costs- of attending apparently outweigh the benefits,- says Grischa Perino, a Professor of Economics at Universität Hamburg.