Uncovering the Impact of Environmental Protests on Climate Change Attitudes

Social movements attempt not only to directly influence those in power, but also to shift public opinion and build momentum towards a future vision. Changing public perception is shown to be particularly effective in achieving desirable future outcomes, but is also particularly difficult to achieve. The motivating question of this research thus asks: What is the impact of local environmental protests on public attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, and policy support around climate change?

To answer this question, this work adopts a quasi-experimental approach using Canadian public opinion and protest data. Public opinion outcomes are drawn from a Canadian nationally representative longitudinal survey conducted from 2022 to 2023. In addition, the project generates and uses a novel dataset of climate protests in Canada during the same time period by leveraging large language models to systematically extract protest data from news coverage. By further elucidating the effectiveness of social movements in bolstering public awareness about climate change, this project provides support for social movements as an important mechanism for achieving climate change mitigation.