Young environmentalists: who are they, and how do they develop?
Chair(s): Stathis Grapsas (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Discussant(s): Maya Benish-Weisman (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Global warming is increasing at an alarming rate, disproportionally affecting the present and future life and mental health of today’s youth. This pressing issue poses developmental scientists with the responsibility and challenge to understand the origins, development, and correlates of youth’s pro-environmental engagement, so as to foster youth positive development amid the climate crisis. Adhering to this call, the present symposium brings together three presentations of research on youth pro-environmental engagement. The first presentation focuses on the development and validation of a new measure of environmental identity with Dutch adolescents and young adults, the ECO-SELF Questionnaire. Demonstrating its utility, the questionnaire captures three dimensions (Self-identity Exploration, Eco-self Centrality, and Climate Action Social Identity) and is associated with other identity measures, climate distress, and pro-environmental behavior. The second presentation focuses on the findings from an ongoing 3-year, 9-wave longitudinal study with Lithuanian adolescents that tracks changes in moral obligation to conserve the environment. The researchers aim to identify latent developmental trajectories through Latent Class Growth Analysis, and to examine how waste recycling behavior differs across them. Similarly, the third presentation focuses on the findings from a recently completed 3-year, 4-wave longitudinal study on adolescent pro-environmental engagement with Chinese, Colombian, and Dutch youth. The researchers will also use Latent Class Growth Analysis to examine the presence of subgroups of adolescents with diverse developmental trajectories in pro-environmental behavior. The discussant will synthesize the findings of the three presentations with a discussion focused on how they enrich our understanding of youth psychology, and on what we still need to learn from future work.
Presentations of the Symposium
Becoming Green: Development and Validation of the ECO-SELF Questionnaire
Annabelle H.T. Christiaens, Jenna Spitzer, Sander Thomaes, Andrik I. Becht
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Background. In young people’s search of who they are and who they want to be, they may define themselves through their interests, values, and goals (i.e., personal identity) and as members of meaningful social groups (i.e., social identity). Parallel to their identity development is the increasing concern regarding the daunting consequences of climate change. With the increasing interest young people show in environmental concerns, these environmental considerations may become a central aspect of who they are. Therefore, the domain of environmentalism may become an increasingly salient identity domain for youth, highlighting the importance of understanding the different processes of forming and maintaining an environmental self-identity during the identity formative phase of adolescence.
Method. In the present pre-registered multi-sample study consisting of Dutch youth (aged 12-25 years old), we tested the psychometric qualities of the newly developed Exploration and Commitments for Sustainable Environmental Lifestyle Formation” questionnaire (ECO-SELF). The scale was developed to assess how adolescents form and maintain their environmental self-identity, to add to existing measures that assess more general environmental self-identity. Understanding how young people develop a sense of environmental self-identity may help to promote environmental self-identity among youth.
Results & conclusion. Exploratory factor analysis in Study 1 reveals a three factor model, capturing the dimensions Self-identity Exploration, Eco-self Centrality, and Climate Action Social Identity. Moreover, the validity of the instrument was supported through meaningful associations with other measures of identity (i.e., self-concept clarity & global environmental self-identity), climate distress (i.e., eco-depression & eco-anxiety), and pro-environmental behavior. These preliminary findings will be extended with confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance testing for age and gender in a second, more representative sample. Together, the presentation will demonstrate the psychometric qualities of the ECO-SELF questionnaire to facilitate future research into the processes of environmental self-identity development.
A Longitudinal Exploration of Adolescents' Moral Obligation to Conserve the Environment and Pro-Environmental Actions
Audra Balundė, Goda Kaniušonytė
Mykolas Romeris University
Adolescents' moral obligation to conserve the environment (personal norms) is linked to various pro-environmental actions, such as recycling, cycling to school, and purchasing organic food (Balundė et al., 2020). However, these findings come from cross-sectional studies, limiting our understanding of how these norms evolve over time and whether they can predict future pro-environmental actions. To address this gap, we explore the development of environmental self-identity and its connection to pro-environmental actions (waste recycling). This longitudinal study involves adolescents from a region in Eastern Lithuania, with 211 8th-graders initially participating across middle and high schools. Data collection began in February 2022 and is ongoing, with the 9th wave scheduled for May 2025. Students are assessed three times per school year, approximately 16 weeks apart. Growth Curve Model analysis with latent variables will be used to examine changes in moral obligation to conserve the environment. Latent Class Growth Analysis will identify potential growth trajectories. Finally, we will test whether waste recycling behavior differs across these trajectories and if it can be predicted by prior moral obligation to conserve the environment.
Identifying developmental trajectories of pro-environmental behaviors: a cross-cultural study
Stathis Grapsas, Sander Thomaes
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Most youth worldwide view climate change as a global emergency. Yet, while youth play a central role in the climate movement, research has suggested that pro-environmental engagement declines in adolescence. We hypothesize that this decline may not be a universal tendency for all adolescents within and across countries. To enhance understanding of how pro-environmental behavior develops in adolescence cross-culturally, the present study aims to identify subgroups of adolescents with different latent trajectories in pro-environmental behaviors across three different countries: the Netherlands, China, and Colombia. Data were collected as part of a recently completed longitudinal study that included yearly measurements of adolescents’ self-reported pro-environmental behavior (4 data waves in the Netherlands and 3 data waves in China and Colombia). Participants (Initial N = 4,918, 53% boys) were aged 12-14 (M = 13.01, SD = 0.80) when the study began. We will analyze the data of participants that fully completed the study (Final N Netherlands = 504; Final N China = 281; Final N Colombia = 267) using Growth Mixture Modeling, a statistical analysis technique that identifies different growth trajectories among unobserved subgroups. The findings will be presented at the conference. By identifying diverse underlying developmental trends of adolescent pro-environmental behavior, the findings can inform theory, policy, and practice aimed at understanding and enhancing youth pro-environmental engagement.
