IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mos/moswps/2025-05.html

Environmental Activism and Political Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Quynh Do
  • Pushkar Maitra

Abstract

Activism against climate change is becoming more common globally. There is, however, little evidence on how such activism affects political outcomes. We examine the impact of the Stop-Adani convoy, a protest led by the former leader of the Greens against the proposed Adani Carmichael coal mine in Queensland Australia, on the electoral outcomes in the 2019 Australian federal election. We find that relative to 2016, the Liberal-National Coalition vote share in 2019 was 10 percent higher along the route of the convoy. In addition, mining engagement in the area significantly and positively affected the Coalition vote share. Surprisingly, the convoy had little positive electoral effects for the Greens. Residents of mining regions exhibited lower environmental consciousness and more socially conservative attitudes, and were more likely to vote for the more conservative Coalition.

Suggested Citation

  • Quynh Do & Pushkar Maitra, 2025. "Environmental Activism and Political Outcomes," Monash Economics Working Papers 2025-05, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mos:moswps:2025-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papertool-v2-storage.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/RePEc/mos/moswps/2025-05.pdf
    File Function: Full-text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Desmond Ang, 2023. "The Birth of a Nation: Media and Racial Hate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(6), pages 1424-1460, June.
    2. Alberto Abadie & Alexis Diamond & Jens Hainmueller, 2015. "Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(2), pages 495-510, February.
    3. Dana R. Fisher & Sohana Nasrin, 2021. "Climate activism and its effects," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(1), January.
    4. Alberto Abadie, 2021. "Using Synthetic Controls: Feasibility, Data Requirements, and Methodological Aspects," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 391-425, June.
    5. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Susan Athey & David A. Hirshberg & Guido W. Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2021. "Synthetic Difference-in-Differences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(12), pages 4088-4118, December.
    6. Pauline Grosjean & Rose Khattar, 2019. "It’s Raining Men! Hallelujah? The Long-Run Consequences of Male-Biased Sex Ratios," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(2), pages 723-754.
    7. Michael Berkebile-Weinberg & Danielle Goldwert & Kimberly C. Doell & Jay J. Bavel & Madalina Vlasceanu, 2024. "The differential impact of climate interventions along the political divide in 60 countries," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sadeghi, Ali & Kibler, Ewald, 2022. "Do bankruptcy laws matter for entrepreneurship? A Synthetic Control Method analysis of a bankruptcy reform in Finland," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    2. Zhentao Shi & Jin Xi & Haitian Xie, 2025. "A Synthetic Business Cycle Approach to Counterfactual Analysis with Nonstationary Macroeconomic Data," Papers 2505.22388, arXiv.org.
    3. Pekka Malo & Juha Eskelinen & Xun Zhou & Timo Kuosmanen, 2024. "Computing Synthetic Controls Using Bilevel Optimization," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 64(2), pages 1113-1136, August.
    4. Robert Messerle & Jonas Schreyögg, 2024. "Country-level effects of diagnosis-related groups: evidence from Germany’s comprehensive reform of hospital payments," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 25(6), pages 1013-1030, August.
    5. Garoupa, Nuno & Spruk, Rok, 2025. "Populist constitutional backsliding and judicial independence: Evidence from Türkiye," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    6. Jacob Kaplan & J. J. Naddeo & Tom Scott, 2026. "De‐prosecution and death: A comment on Hogan (2022)," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 64(1), pages 177-198, January.
    7. Cho, Sang-Wook (Stanley) & Wong, Sally, 2025. "Monetary regimes and regional economies: A counterfactual perspective from two euro opt-outs," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Arne Henningsen & Guy Low & David Wuepper & Tobias Dalhaus & Hugo Storm & Dagim Belay & Stefan Hirsch, 2026. "Estimating Causal Effects With Observational Data: Guidelines for Agricultural and Applied Economists," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(2), pages 356-382, June.
    9. Crudu, Federico & Di Stefano, Roberta & Mellace, Giovanni & Tiezzi, Silvia, 2024. "The gray zone: How not imposing a strict lockdown at the beginning of a pandemic can cost many lives," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    10. Florian F Gunsilius, 2025. "A primer on optimal transport for causal inference with observational data," Papers 2503.07811, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2026.
    11. Clair, Travis St., 2024. "The fiscal effects of immigration on local governments: Revisiting the Mariel Boatlift," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    12. Songnian Chen & Junlong Feng, 2023. "Group-Heterogeneous Changes-in-Changes and Distributional Synthetic Controls," Papers 2307.15313, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2026.
    13. Eicher, Theo S. & Eskimez, Reina Kawai & Newiak, Monique, 2025. "Effects of IMF-supported programs on gender inequality," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 90(PB).
    14. Justin C. Wiltshire, 2023. "Walmart Supercenters and Monopsony Power: How A Large, Low-Wage Employer Impacts Local Labor Markets," Department Discussion Papers 2304, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    15. Dovern, Jonas & Frank, Johannes & Glas, Alexander & Müller, Lena Sophia & Perico Ortiz, Daniel, 2023. "Estimating pass-through rates for the 2022 tax reduction on fuel prices in Germany," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    16. Yang, Bingyan & Liu, Ruiming & Liu, Chuanbin & Shi, Yang, 2025. "Publish or perish: Up-or-out rules and research performance of universities," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    17. Roy Cerqueti & Raffaella Coppier & Alessandro Girardi & Marco Ventura, 2022. "The sooner the better: lives saved by the lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak. The case of Italy," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(1), pages 46-70.
    18. Ko, Dong Gyun, 2025. "Did the American Rescue Plan cause inflation? A synthetic control approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    19. S. V. Doroshenko & R. I. Vasileva & V. P. Litvinets, 2024. "The Far Eastern Development Program and Effectiveness for Regions: Case-Study Assessment," Studies on Russian Economic Development, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 237-245, April.
    20. Campos, Nauro F. & Coricelli, Fabrizio & Franceschi, Emanuele, 2022. "Institutional integration and productivity growth: Evidence from the 1995 enlargement of the European Union," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General
    • P18 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Energy; Environment

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mos:moswps:2025-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Simon Angus (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.monash.edu/business/economics .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.