Living on the front range of Colorado, then in northern Utah, I was exposed to and have learned a great deal about the harmful effects of air pollution. Both areas can, at times, have the worst air quality in the United States. Together with a few other concerned citizens, we started a local clean air group, and launched a clean air poster contest at the local university. A number of our contestants and winners were from overseas and, much to our surprise, our humble little clean air Facebook page garnered many followers not only locally, but from countries including Palestine, Brazil, Philippines, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the Emirates, Canada and Turkey as well. It was clear, the international community is equally connected to and concerned about the negative impacts of air pollution.

Please feel free to share your stories and efforts on the eePro Global discussion thread, “Air Pollution: Local is Global,” including successes and challenges!

One effort we are happy to share is the amazing work of Dr. Edwin Stafford and Dr. Roslynn Brain, Utah State University, who in 2015, launched a clean air poster contest at Logan High School, in northern Utah, combining environmental science, art, and savvy marketing. Their work has great relevance to an international audience, and can help act as a template to be adapted for communities around the world. (Please see a blog Dr. Stafford wrote about their work for the Sustainability Times, based in France.)

According to Dr. Stafford, the aim was to educate teens learning to drive to understand the air pollution implications of their new driving privilege and to learn driving and transportation strategies to preserve air quality, such as by refraining from idling and considering carpooling or taking the bus to and from school. Please read an overview of their work below, “Tackling Utah’s Air Pollution -- How the ‘Inconvenient Youth’ Influence their Parents to Take Clean Air Action.”

To see the full case report, please visit: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/sus.2018.0019

It is of special interest that a co-author on the paper, Paige Morgan, was one of the Utah Beehive 5 Under 25 award recipients for 2018. This statewide youth recognition program is modeled after NAAEE’s 30 Under 30. Since 2016, NAAEE's EE 30 Under 30 program has recognized 60 individuals from around the world who are making a difference through environmental education. To learn more about NAAEE’s 30 Under 30 program, visit: https://naaee.org/our-work/programs/ee-30-under-30.

Another helpful example of students taking the lead is, in 2013, the Asian and Pacific Islander Obesity Prevention Alliance (APIOPA) began working with schools to educate and empower students to work toward changes in the air quality on and around their school campuses. Please see the GEEP case study here: https://naaee.org/eepro/groups/global-ee/case-study/air-quality-workshop....

Tackling Utah’s Air Pollution -- How the ‘Inconvenient Youth’ Influence their Parents to Take Clean Air Action by Dr. Edwin Stafford and Dr. Roslynn Brain

Overcoming Utahns’ general apathy about local air pollution has been a key challenge for tackling Utah’s air pollution problem. Targeting adults for formal education about clean air actions, for instance, poses formidable barriers simply because adults are busy and there are few institutions where adults can be reached easily as a captive audience. Can teens, however, make a difference to engage their adult parents and influence their behaviors? This was the question we set out to explore.

In 2015, we launched a clean air poster contest at Logan High School, combining environmental science, art, and savvy marketing, to educate teens learning to drive to understand the air pollution implications of their new driving privilege and to learn driving and transportation strategies to preserve air quality (e.g., refrain from idling, trip-chaining, carpooling, taking the bus, etc.). A post-contest survey indicated that contestants were more likely to engage in air pollution-reduction behaviors promoted in their posters than before the contest.

Unexpectedly, contestants also reported that they were conversing with their parents, families and friends about clean air actions in what we called the ‘Inconvenient Youth’ effect based on a Wall Street Journal article that reported how growing school environmental education programs were encouraging youth to pester their parents about environmental behaviors, and parents often felt pressured to comply to maintain their children’s respect. Since 2015, our contest has grown into the Utah High School Clean Air Poster Contest, engaging hundreds of teens each year at high schools across Cache and Grand counties. Poster entries are often funny, edgy, terrifying and tied to teen pop culture.

Intrigued by the potential influence teens may have on their adult parents, for the 2018 iteration of the contest, we surveyed poster contestants’ parents for the first time. Seventy-one percent of parents reported that their teens initiated conversations with them about Utah’s air pollution. Statistical analysis found that parents reported that they were most influenced into changing their own driving behaviors when their teens talked to them about specific actions for preserving air quality, such as refraining from idling, compared to more general conversations about air pollution or the contest itself.

Contrary to our expectations, only a few parents reported that their teens pestered them to force compliance. Rather, the vast majority of parents said that their teens’ influence came about with a simple, rational conversation about air pollution or request to take action, and some parents reported even welcoming it! Our results indicate that teens learning about Utah’s air pollution and ways to address it through the poster contest can become credible and persuasive change agents among their parents.

Among the next issues for study will be “parenting styles” and “status of teens in the family” as factors determining how effectively teens influence their parents to address environmental issues. Cultural differences may play an important role in how teens interact with their parents and thus how environmental practices are communicated across families.

Feel free to contact Dr. Stafford directly if you have any questions or would like additional information.

Edwin R. Stafford, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing
Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University
Department of Marketing & Strategy
Web sites: www.cleantech.usu.edu;  cleanaircontest.usu.edu
email: ed.stafford@usu.edu | office 435.797.3890 | fax 435.797.1091 | 3550 Old Main Hill Logan, Utah 84322-3550 | faculty profile
 
The Art of Clean Air (link)
The Inconvenient Youth Revisited (link)