This study examined how parents and friends may shape the environmental attitudes (EA) and environmental behaviors (EB) of 9 to 13 year-olds in Spain. The study also examined how age and gender might make a difference in the development of children's EA and EB.
Parents and children – consisting of 377 parent/child pairs – completed questionnaires assessing their environmental attitudes and behaviors. Most of the parent participants (69%) were women, and 72% of the children had parents with college degrees. The four schools from which the children were recruited were in similar socioeconomic neighborhoods and used similar curricula.
A children's adaptation of the New Environmental Paradigm was used to assess children's environmental attitudes, and the General Environmental Behavior scale was used to assess their pro-ecological behavior. Adult versions of the same scales were used to assess parents' EA and EB. Children were asked to indicate their best friend, which allowed for a matching of each child's EA and EB with their best friends'.
An initial analysis of the data found that girls' scored significantly higher than boys in both EA and EB, with no differences according to age. Children's EB and EA were positively related, but this relationship was stronger for older children than for younger ones. Most importantly, parents' and best friends' EB was positively related to children's EB. Younger children's EB, however, was more strongly influenced by their parents' EB than that of older ones, while best friends' influence was stronger for the older children. The influence of parents' and best friend's EB on children's EB was stronger for girls than for boys.
These results highlight the importance of children's social reference group in the development of pro-environmentalism. It also calls attention to age and gender differences in the transmission of EA and EB from parents and peers. As children move into adolescence, peers tend to become increasingly more influential and parents less influential. Peers, then, should be recognized as important social agents in shaping children's pro-environmentalism. Also to be recognized are gender differences, with girls being more sensitive to their parents' and best friends' EB than boys.
The role of peers in children's pro-environmentalism suggests that practitioners and researchers would do well to shift from an individualistic perspective to a more collective one when promoting and evaluating children's EA and EB. While pro-environmental behaviors are important at an individual level, collective action for the environment should also be promoted. This shift would not only reflect the influence of the social context in the development of pro-environmentalism but could also amplify the effects of environmental education programs.
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