Social norms and climate-friendly behavior of adolescents

Adolescents are the decision-makers of the future, and as educational research shows, behaviors, habits, and attitudes established at young age strongly shape behavior in adulthood. Therefore, it is important to understand what factors shape young people's climate-relevant behavior. In this stu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2022-04, Vol.17 (4), p.e0266847-e0266847
Main Authors: Koessler, Ann-Kathrin, Vorlaufer, Tobias, Fiebelkorn, Florian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescent Behavior
Adolescents
Adult
Adults
Age
Attitude
Attitudes
Behavior
Biology and Life Sciences
Carbon dioxide
Climate
Climate change
Climatic changes
Decision making
Demographic aspects
Donations
Earth Sciences
Educational research
Environmental economics
Humans
Humboldt, Alexander von (1769-1859)
Hypotheses
Influence
Intervention
Norms
Peer Group
People and Places
Physical Sciences
Social aspects
Social behavior
Social Norms
Social Sciences
Teenagers
Young adults
Youth
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Summary:Adolescents are the decision-makers of the future, and as educational research shows, behaviors, habits, and attitudes established at young age strongly shape behavior in adulthood. Therefore, it is important to understand what factors shape young people's climate-relevant behavior. In this study, we examine how information about peer behavior affects adolescents' perception of prevailing social norms and own decision-making. Experimentally, we manipulated whether adolescents received information about other young people's (lack of) support for climate protection, operationalized as a donation to a CO2 offsetting scheme. We find that empirical expectations shifted for all age groups when the information revealed that peers donated nothing or only small amounts. Donation behavior and the normative assessment, however, changed only in the younger age groups. Our study illustrates the caution that must be exercised when others' behavior becomes visible or is deliberatively made salient in order to induce behavioral change, especially among young individuals.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0266847