The effect of educational level, income, and knowledge on willingness to participate in the climate transition, and how age moderates these effects.

Abstract

The world population is growing, as well as the prosperity of the world, which has led to environmental problems (Duyvendak & Bouw, 2013). This paper looked at the various factors influencing an individual's willingness to participate in the energy transition on a municipality level. It was suspected that income, knowledge, and education could positively influence the willingness to participate (Shen & Saijo, 2008; Lee et al., 2015) and that these effects might be influenced by age. Using multiple linear regressions, including gender and the municipality and neighbourhood as control variables, no effect of income, education, or age was found. There only was a positive effect found between knowledge and willingness. This paper was done on an explorative level and had several limitations regarding the data collection and analysis. Therefore additional research should be done to determine if indeed no effect of income, age, and education exist and if the effect of knowledge can be repeated. Preferably, longitudinal research should be conducted to determine the directing of the relationships.