Adolescents' Reasoning About Pro-Environmental Behavior: A Moral Issue?

• In Event: Moral Reasoning From Childhood to Emerging Adulthood: New Perspectives

Abstract

Kahn and colleagues demonstrated in a series of studies that children generally think it is unacceptable to engage in actions that are harmful to the environment (for an overview see Kahn, 2006). According to this research, protecting the natural environment is a moral issue even for young children and irrespective of their socio-economic and cultural background.
In Kahn's research children were asked about harm that was directly inflicted by humans on animals, plants and eco-systems (e.g., by polluting a river in the neighbourhood). It is unclear whether behaviors that harm the natural environment more indirectly (e.g., by consuming too much fossil fuel) are similarly considered moral issues. A second limitation of Kahn's work is in its almost exclusive focus on childhood. As a consequence, it is unclear how the moralization of the natural environment that is present in children develops in the adolescent years and beyond.
The study is based on survey data that were collected nation-wide across all provinces in rural and urban Canada with 12- to 19-year-old adolescents (N = 651, M = 15.07 years, SD = 1.89, 48% female). Participants were presented five different types of pro-environmental behaviors: (1) saving energy by walking, biking and using public transportation, (2) saving energy at home (e.g., by turning off unused lights, using AC less), (3) recycling, (4) reducing plastic waste and (5) proper disposal of hazardous household waste (e.g., batteries). Four criteria that are commonly used in Social Domain Theory (e.g., Smetana, Jambon, & Ball, 2014) to differentiate between moral versus non-moral issues were applied: (1) act evaluation (e.g., How bad is it not to recycle?), (2) prescriptivity/acceptability (e.g., Is it ok to always use the car even for short distances?), (3) universality (e.g., Imagine: There are other countries similar to Canada, where no one recycles. Is it OK for people living in these countries not to recycle?), and (4) rule-contingency (e.g., Imagine: Your country`s government would pass a law that says people can use air-conditioning as much as they want. Would it be OK then to let the air-conditioning run day and night over the summer?). Answers were given on five-point rating scales (e.g., 1 = absolutely ok to 5 = not ok at all).
Findings demonstrate that all five pro-environmental behaviors were significantly more often considered a moral issue than a non-moral issue (see Table 1). At the same time, significant differences for the various behaviors emerged. While about two thirds of participants considered recycling and proper disposal of hazardous household waste a moral issue, only 40% of participants perceived energy conservation by using the car less often a moral obligation while 50% were undecided about this issue. The tendency to moralize pro-environmental behavior was unrelated to participants’ age, gender, urban versus rural living context, and parents' SES. Overall, pro-environmental behavior was considered a moral issue by many teenagers. However, while few deliberately excluded pro-environmental behaviors from the moral domain, a substantive portion remained undecided.

Author

• Tobias Krettenauer, Wilfrid Laurier University
  Presenting Author