Pro-environmental behavior and adolescent moral development

Older adolescents engage less in pro-environmental behaviors and consider such behaviors less obligatory than younger adolescents

The aim of this study was to investigate age-related differences in pro-environmental behavior as it relates to moral judgments about environmental issues and emotions. While previous research indicates that most children believe that humans have a moral obligation to protect the natural environment, the moral stance of adolescents in relation to pro-environmental behavior has been rarely investigated.

This study engaged 325 Canadian youth from early, middle, and late adolescence. Students in grades 6-7 and 10-11 were recruited from elementary, senior public, and high schools in Ontario, Canada. The participating schools were in socially heterogeneous neighborhoods with predominantly middle-class families. Older adolescents were recruited through ﬁrst-year psychology courses at a university located in the same region of Canada. A questionnaire was used to collect information about the adolescents’ moral emotion expectancies, moral judgments, emotional affinity for nature, and pro-environmental behavior. Moral emotion expectancies refer to expected emotional responses to behaviors that either violate or conform to a moral standard. For purposes of this study, examples of emotional responses or moral emotions include guilt, shame, outrage, pride, and awe, when they are based on moral appraisals of behaviors.

Most of the participants considered everyday pro-environmental behaviors moral issues and thus obligatory regardless of whether or not these behaviors are common practice in a country. This judgment, however, varied across environmental issues. While recycling was considered a moral issue by more than 80% of the participants, energy conservation was rated much lower as a moral issue.

Results also varied by age. The youngest age group scored signiﬁcantly higher in pro-environmental behavior than the middle age group. The oldest age group scored the lowest of the other two groups (i.e., the middle and youngest age groups). The difference in pro-environmental behavior was more pronounced between early and middle adolescence than between middle and late adolescence. Age-related differences in pro-environmental behavior, however, were mediated by both cognitive and affective variables. Older adolescents were less likely to consider pro-environmental behavior as obligatory and expressed weaker emotional connections with nature.

Overall, the findings of this study indicate that the moralization of the natural environment found to be characteristic for children applies to adolescents as well. There are some important qualiﬁcations, however. With adolescents, the moralization of the natural environment does not uniformly apply across the age span and depends on the type of behavior involved.

While the older adolescents’ weaker feelings of connectedness with nature may account for their lower levels of pro-environmental behavior, more research is needed to identify specific factors suppressing pro-environmentalism in youth. Moral emotions — such as pride and guilt, for example — may counteract age-related declines in pro-environmentalism over the adolescent years. If so, moral emotions might function as a protective factor and could thus be considered when developing pro-environmental programs for adolescents.