Extreme Weather, Public Attention and the Formation of Environmental Nonprofits

Extreme weather increasingly catalyzes policy changes, yet their organizational effects remain underexamined. We explore whether extreme weather influences the formation and initial financial capacity of environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) in China. Drawing on a city-year panel of 276 prefecture-level cities from 2015 to 2019 that links records of abnormally hot, cold, and rainy days to ENGO registries, we estimate the effects of extreme weather on new ENGO formation and initial financial capacity. Extreme weather functions as a focusing event, increasing ENGO formation and initial financial capacity, with stronger effects in cities where public attention is low and among grassroots organizations. Temperature shocks have more consistent impacts than precipitation. Theoretically, we extend research on nonprofit emergence and focusing event theory by identifying extreme weather as another driver of nonprofit formation and by demonstrating that baseline public attention conditions shock effects. Methodologically, we introduce a new subnational dataset that enables systematic tests of climate-society linkages in a major developing economy.