Who wins and who loses?

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the Political Behaviour Colloquium features a presentation by Max Bradley, EUI researcher at the Department of Social and Political Sciences.

What is the role of local communities in determining the winners and losers of the green transition? Some communities are more exposed to the effects of the transition compared with others due to the presence of firms / sectors vulnerable to decarbonization policies. While it is often assumed that all ‘transition-exposed’ communities bear economic costs, I contend that some have actually accrued economic benefits. For a community to benefit, firms and workers must leverage new investments and opportunities arising out of the transition. Thus, I argue that the local concentration of human capital – the skills and knowledge within a community – is a key determinant of which communities emerge as the economic 'winners' or 'losers' of the transition. Additionally, I propose that being a resident of such communities should shape an individual’s green preferences. I test this argument in the UK, leveraging local-authority level economic and census data, as well as individual-level survey data. Using a matched difference-in-differences and event study designs, I demonstrate that since the 2008 Climate Change Act was introduced, communities with lower (higher) levels of human capital have seen a decline (improvement) in the economic performance of transition-exposed sectors. Then, using individual-level survey data from 2024, I show descriptively that these community-level economic consequences shape local attitudes – residents in ‘winning’ communities are more favourable towards the green transition compared with residents in ‘losing’ communities. These effects hold when controlling for an individual's working status and their occupation – indicating a community-level sociotropic mechanism. I aim to causally identify these effects, as well as additional mechanisms in a forthcoming survey experiment.

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