Green by Knowledge? How Local Knowledge Economies Shape Green Attitudes and Voting Behavior

The rise of the knowledge economy, fueled by rapid technological change, is transforming societies and labor markets in particular. While the earlier literature on the knowledge economy has focused on tech companies, nowadays green industries have become an important part of knowledge economies as well. A crucial implication of the literature examining the political consequences of the rise of the knowledge economy is that this phenomenon contributes to a socially more progressive society by, for instance, fostering support for green policies. We test this proposition by examining whether living in a strong local knowledge economy (LKE) is associated with more support for climate action and Green parties. Moreover, we investigate whether this relationship is driven by compositional effects and/or contextual effects. Compositional effects might stem from individuals who are personally expected to benefit from living in a strong LKE, such as highly educated individuals or those working in knowledge-intensive jobs. On the other hand, contextual effects might arise through better infrastructure and socialization among individuals with and without knowledge economy jobs in strong LKEs, which might lead to a spreading of green values among individuals who only indirectly benefit from the knowledge economy. To test our expectations, we combine individual-level data on support for climate action and voter potential for the German Green Party from an original survey fielded in Germany between October 2020 and January 2021 through phone interviews (N=4,116) with contextual data at the district level measured in 2020. The contextual data include our main independent variable, measuring the share of employment in the knowledge-intensive service sector, as well as further control variables. To analyze the relationship between the strength of the local knowledge economy and individual-level support for climate action and the voter potential for the Greens, we estimate OLS regressions with robust standard errors clustered at the district level. Our results indicate that, as expected, individuals living in strong LKEs have significantly higher support for climate action and higher voter potential for the Greens. Furthermore, we find evidence for compositional effects driving the relationship between living in a strong LKE and support for climate action. In contrast, contextual effects seem to explain the positive association between living in a strong LKE and individual voter potential for the Greens. Our findings underscore the importance of the rise of the knowledge economy at the local level in fostering support for the green transition.