Concern Without Consumer Voice? Climate Orientation, Migration Generation, and Political Consumerism Across European Social Survey Countries

Abstract

Generic survey measures of consumer boycotting and demonstration participation cannot identify whether respondents acted for climate-related reasons. This study therefore separates climate-specific orientations from general political participation repertoires and examines how both vary by migration generation and origin. We analysed European Social Survey Round 11, edition 4.1 (N = 50,116 across 30 participating countries); because the original submission used an edition 3.0 subset (N = 46,162 across 28 countries), we also report common 28-country sensitivity analyses. The primary analytic sample comprised 48,914 native-origin, first-generation African, other first-generation, second-generation African-origin, and other second-generation respondents. Weighted linear probability models included host-country fixed effects and design-based standard errors using sampling strata and primary sampling units. First-generation African immigrants showed no statistically detectable adjusted differences from native-origin respondents in climate responsibility, climate worry, or belief in the human causation of climate change. They had lower adjusted probabilities of consumer boycotting (−10.07 percentage points, 95% CI [−15.25, −4.89]) and demonstration participation (−4.09 points, 95% CI [−7.81, −0.37]). A fully interacted stacked tactic model showed that income decile was more strongly associated with boycotting than with demonstrations (income decile × boycott = 0.79 points, 95% CI [0.35, 1.23]), whereas subjective income difficulty did not differ by tactic. Adding income terms reduced the African immigrant boycott coefficient by only 0.62 points on a common analytic sample. The results do not measure climate activism. They indicate no statistically detectable differences in measured climate orientations, but lower first-generation participation in general political repertoires; income is related to boycotting but is insufficient to explain group differences.