Responsibility towards future generations is a strong predictor of proenvironmental engagement

Abstract

Although humanity is already experiencing negative consequences of climate change, future generations may experience even worse outcomes in the absence of concerted, collective effort to mitigate and adapt. At the same time, temporal and interpersonal discounting breed inaction in the face of collective action problems that unfold over long time horizons such as climate change. Some research suggests that higher levels of perceived responsibility to future generations is associated with greater motivation to act on climate change. We re-evaluated this claim in a large (N = 13,749), highly-powered, and nationally representative sample of the U.S. population. We found that people report feeling a high amount of responsibility to protect the environment on behalf of future generations. This sense of responsibility is endorsed more strongly than other reasons for addressing climate change and appears to be endorsed to a high degree across geographic regions, income levels, education attainment, gender, race, generation status, religious affiliation and political party membership. Further, even after accounting for established demographic predictors of proenvironmental behavior, perceived responsibility to future generations predicted a host (i.e., 27) of proenvironmental outcomes. We conclude that by potentially targeting a widely endorsed responsibility, interventions might prove effective across the political and religious spectrum in American society.