Examining the conflict and interconnectedness of young people’s ideas about environmental issues, responsibility and action

A sense of hope is a key driver of students’ endorsement of environmental action<div data-canvas-width="488.0486485981838">The purpose of this study was to understand whether adolescents are forming an understanding of "environmental interconnectedness" by studying factors that underlie discrepancies in their environmental views.</div>
Sections of the Health Behavior of School Students (HBSS) were used to collect data from 305 high school students in Queensland, Australia to determine if their understanding of the environment is in conflict or if they are forming interconnections between issues, responsibilities, and actions not yet identified. This study also aimed to identify whether there are any common factors driving their ideas about environmental issues and actions. The questionnaire was delivered to students during class time in five different schools.

Findings indicated that students’ ideas about environmental responsibility influenced the level of importance they placed on global warming and resource consumption. Overall, they allocated higher environmental responsibility to government than to themselves and rated global warming as the most important environmental threat while rating resource consumption as the least important threat. Students rated “saving electricity” as the most important action to improve the environment and “writing to politicians” as the least important action. A sense of hope was found to be a key driver of students’ endorsement of environmental action. The authors conclude that the previously documented discrepancies in students' environmental views (illustrated in this study by placing considerably more importance on global warming than on resource consumption when, in fact, the two issues are highly interrelated, or the disconnect between personal and governmental responsibility), are unified by a framework related to hope and hopelessness. Building on young people's hope may be key to influencing their thinking about the environment so that they can build mental connections between human activity, environmental issues and, especially, the role of collective action in effecting practice and policy changes to support the environment.