The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Despite several decades of research on more effectively communicating climate change to the general public, there is only limited knowledge about how older adults engage with an issue that will shape and define future generations. We focus on two key factors that may motivate younger and older adults to engage in climate change action, legacy concern and place attachment, and assess whether older adults differ in any appreciable way from the general population in this domain. We randomly exposed participants of different ages to either a Legacy, Place, or control writing induction task before they completed various self-report measures. Both induction conditions were associated with significantly greater pro-environmental behavioral intentions and donations for all age groups when compared to the control condition. Legacy motivation and biophilia were used as manipulation checks and found to partially mediate these effects. Findings suggest that legacy and place message framing may be useful in prompting adults of all ages to take action to help combat climate change.
Climate change is real [
Communication research has explored how subtle behavioral interventions and messaging frames can both increase citizen engagement in climate change issues and encourage pro-environmental behaviors. For example, highlighting local impacts of climate change makes the benefits of acting to mitigate climate change more tangible, leading people to act more sustainably [
Older adults, defined here as those beyond child-rearing age, are sometimes left out of climate change discussions, despite representing an untapped and potentially powerful group to assist in changing sustainability behaviors [
However, research is needed to advance an understanding of not only how age differences in sustainability behaviors emerge, but also how the adoption and implementation of interventions to promote sustainability among older adults can best be achieved. The effect of chronological age on sustainability behaviors may depend on several psychological factors that differ between individuals and change across the lifespan. Theoretical insights from relevant psychological and gerontological scholarship suggest two central factors that stand out: place attachment and legacy concern.
Place attachment, the formation of emotional and cognitive bonds with a particular place [
This study advances knowledge about place attachment in the context of sustainability behaviors. Devine-Wright (2013) [
Both place attachment and concern about climate change may be related to biophilia, humans’ particular affiliation and emotional connection to the natural world [
In addition to place attachment, another psychological variable with strong implications for older adults’ environmental behavior is their motivation to leave behind a positive legacy for future generations. Environmental protection clearly involves a temporal element, securing natural resources for future generations. The meaning of this long time frame may shift with increasing age, as constraints on time left in life may change priorities about how to use the remaining time. As people age, generative concerns, defined as a person’s desire to guide future generations, become increasingly significant [
Since older adults have higher levels of legacy concern and place attachment, leveraging these psychological motives could serve as effective intervention strategies to promote environmental behavior among older adults. The current study assesses the impact of two motivational strategies—an induction designed to increase legacy motivation and an induction designed to enhance place attachment—on pro-environmental behavioral intent and behavior (donations to an environmental charity). Specifically, this study has three goals: (1) to replicate and expand upon the findings of an earlier study on the impact of legacy motives on pro-environmental behaviors [
Within this context, we have three hypotheses:
That the Legacy induction will be positively associated with pro-environmental behavioral intentions and pro-environmental behavior; That the Place induction will be positively associated with pro-environmental behavioral intentions and pro-environmental behavior; That older adults exposed to the Legacy and Place inductions will experience greater positive associations with pro-environmental intentions and behaviors than younger adults.
A diverse sample of 1005 American participants were recruited and completed our study between 12/7/16 and 12/27/16 using the advanced sampling procedures available through Amazon’s TurkPrime (an enhanced version of Amazon’s mTurk) to achieve an even distribution across ages in the sample, ranging from 18–87. Specifically, TurkPrime’s HyperBatch, IP tracking, and age-based quota features were used to simultaneously recruit 5 groups of 200 American adults from the following age groups: 18–30, 31–40, 41–50, 51–60, and 61+ (64–87). Online experiment services like mTurk have numerous advantages and have been found to be at least as valid as traditional recruitment methods [
Five attention checks were used as quality control measures and were included in the experimental design, with an a priori cutoff of missing three or more attention checks, or blatantly not following instructions, set as the criteria for exclusion from analysis. One attention check gave lengthy instructions but asked participants to simply write “I read the instructions” and to ignore the multiple choice options presented on the page. Other attention checks involved assessing timestamps and screening for nonsensical responses on the writing task to see if participants complied with instructions, or simply clicked through the experiment as quickly as possible. Based on these criteria, 17 participants were excluded from analysis, leaving a remaining total sample of 988. Because this study was able to achieve an even distribution of ages across the sample, participants were then divided chronologically into three age groups for analysis: young adults 18–35 (
An analysis of demographic information provided by participants revealed that 68% of our sample identified as female (
Two measures were used as dependent variables, one was a scale measuring pro-environmental behavioral intentions, and one was a proxy for pro-environmental behavior. The Pro-Environmental Behavioral Intentions Scale [
Two measures were used as manipulation checks to ensure that each induction was evoking the responses intended. The Legacy Motive Scale [
Participants also provided extensive psychographic data that could potentially mediate the relationship between the inductions and environmental action. Two hazard belief questions were adapted from Miceli, Sotgiu, & Settanni (2008) [
Participants who met sampling requirements viewed an mTurk advertisement for a 20–35 minute survey and writing task. Once participants provided informed consent and opted to participate in the study, they were randomly exposed to one of three different 5–7 minute writing tasks, representing three induction conditions—Place (
Writing task one, the Place-based induction (Place), asked each participant to write about a place that he or she had an emotional connection to, and to imagine how extreme weather events or climate change might impact that place and change it in the future. This induction was adapted from Smyer (2017) [
Following exposure to their randomly assigned writing task, all participants completed demographic questions and our full battery of self-report measures and scales. After completing all measures and questions, participants entered a code and were digitally thanked, paid, and debriefed. Once a sufficient number of participants had completed the online experiment, data collection was closed, and collected data were de-identified and downloaded for analysis.
Our analytical approach was to conduct a series of 3 (Induction) x 3 (Age) factorial ANOVAs. The independent variable ‘Induction’ had 3 levels: Legacy, Place, and Control. The independent variable ‘Age’ also had 3 levels: young adults 18–35, middle-aged adults 36–52, and older adults 53–87. 3x3 Factorial ANOVAs were run for each dependent variable: one for mean pro-environmental intention score, and one for the amount participants volunteered to donate to planting trees. We then conducted mediation analyses using two measures we had included as manipulation checks, legacy motivation and biophilia attitudes, to assess whether they mediated the relationships between our inductions and our dependent variables. Finally, several exploratory 3x3 Factorial ANOVAs were run using the rest of the psychographic scales included in our testing battery, to identify variable relationships underlying observed effects.
To ensure statistical assumptions necessary for a series of 3 (Induction) x 3 (Age) factorial ANOVAs had been met, data were screened for outliers, homogeneity of variance, and univariate normality. Histograms were visually inspected for outliers, with none identified. In all cases, Levene’s test was satisfied or standard deviation ratios did not exceed 2:1, suggesting adequate homogeneity of variance between groups. Additionally, Bartlett’s test indicated sphericity assumptions were adequately met or corrected for in all analyses.
As expected, the Legacy induction was associated with greater legacy motivation (
(a) Impact of Legacy and Place inductions on legacy motives. (b) Impact of Legacy and Place inductions on biophilia scores. Error bars denote ±1
As predicted, the Place induction was associated with greater feelings of biophilia (
While older adults had significantly more pro-environmental intentions than middle or young adults overall, both inductions were associated with significantly more pro-environmental behavioral intentions for all ages when compared to the control induction (
(a) Impact of Legacy and Place inductions on pro-environmental behavioral intentions. (b) Impact of Legacy and Place inductions on donations to an environmental charity. Error bars denote ±1
Induction | Age Group | Mean | 95% Confidence Interval | |
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Lower Bound | Upper Bound | |||
Place | Young | 3.55 | 3.34 | 3.76 |
Middle | 3.35 | 3.14 | 3.56 | |
Older | 3.85 | 3.65 | 4.04 | |
Legacy | Young | 3.69 | 3.48 | 3.90 |
Middle | 3.64 | 3.44 | 3.83 | |
Older | 3.89 | 3.67 | 4.10 | |
Control | Young | 3.31 | 3.14 | 3.48 |
Middle | 3.27 | 3.08 | 3.46 | |
Older | 3.35 | 3.17 | 3.52 |
Both the Place and Legacy inductions were associated with more pro-environmental donations for all ages compared to the control (
Induction | Age Group | Mean | 95% Confidence Interval | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Lower Bound | Upper Bound | |||
Place | Young | 3.58 | 2.95 | 4.21 |
Middle | 4.29 | 3.67 | 4.91 | |
Older | 4.09 | 3.51 | 4.67 | |
Legacy | Young | 3.52 | 2.89 | 4.15 |
Middle | 3.61 | 3.04 | 4.19 | |
Older | 4.54 | 3.91 | 5.18 | |
Control | Young | 2.90 | 2.38 | 3.41 |
Middle | 3.45 | 2.90 | 4.01 | |
Older | 3.71 | 3.19 | 4.23 |
We conducted two mediation analyses to assess whether legacy motivation mediated the Legacy induction’s effect on behavioral intentions (
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In step 1 of the second analysis, we revealed that exposure to the Legacy induction had a significant effect on donations,
We conducted two additional mediation analyses to assess whether biophilia mediated the Place induction’s effect on donations (
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We also assessed whether greater biophilia would mediate the effect of the Place induction on behavioral intentions. In step 1 of this analysis, we revealed that exposure to the Place induction had a significant effect on behavioral intentions,
To further explore the relationships among these variables, four additional parallel mediation analyses including both mediators simultaneously were conducted and are available in the supplementary material (
Several other psychological variables that could potentially underlie the relationship between the inductions and pro-environmental behaviors were included in our analysis, including natural hazard perceptions, perceived future self-continuity, and death thought accessibility. However, neither the Place nor Legacy inductions had an effect on these variables (
Two elements provide a context for this study: population aging and increased scrutiny of the impact of message framing on pro-environmental behaviors and intention to act. The United States is an aging country in an aging world. Currently, there are 65 million Americans 60 and older, estimated to grow to 100 million by mid-century. Worldwide, the figures are 1 billion now; estimated to be 2 billion by mid-century [
Within this context, this study had several goals. The first was to replicate and expand upon prior work on the positive impact of legacy motives on environmental attitude and behavior by exploring whether the impact of a Legacy induction is moderated by age [
Using the MTurk platform, we assembled a balanced sample across three age groups: young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults. Within this sample, both Legacy and Place inductions were successful at improving pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. Specifically, Zaval and colleague’s (2015) [
The inclusion of a biophilia measure adds an innovative dimension to our understanding of changes in environmental attitude, as we found that both experimental inductions were associated with greater biophilia, and that greater biophilia partially mediated the effect of the Place induction on climate action, across age groups. It may be that increasing love of nature is an underlying mechanism for the effectiveness of place-based framing inductions on behavioral intent and environmental behavior. Additionally, there was a significant correlation between age and biophilia, with greater age associated with greater levels of biophilia. This is an area of communication research that warrants further study.
Both induction strategies—inductions to drive legacy motives and inductions to encourage place attachment—can be useful in increasing adults’ intention to take action and their subsequent actions on climate issues. In the absence of age interactions, it appears that these strategies are equally effective across the lifespan. The potency of our findings imply their potential utility in promoting sustainability behaviors through legacy-based or place-based message framing or other forms of intervention, and so warrant further research.
Our theoretical model hypothesized separate pathways for the impacts of the legacy induction and place induction on legacy motivation and biophilia respectively. Although we did find that the Legacy induction was associated with significantly greater legacy motivation than the Place induction, we found higher legacy motivation and biophilia attitudes in both the place and legacy conditions, when compared to the control condition. This warrants further attention. It may be that our operationalization of the two inductions was not sufficiently differentiated (e.g., mention of “future generations” in the place induction may have elicited legacy concerns). It also may be that both inductions affected an underlying third element that itself affected both legacy motivation and biophilia. Future research should explore these possibilities, as well as the mechanism underlying why increased legacy motivation increases biophilia.
We had hypothesized that the Place induction would impact environmental hazard belief or environmental hazard concern: the belief in the general connection between natural hazards, climate change, and salient danger. However, there was no effect of either induction on hazard belief and concern. It is possible that if these items had been reworded to focus on the specific concern of the place to which participants were attached, the Place induction would have had a positive impact on hazard concern and belief. Additional research should continue to explore whether inductions that enhance one's connection to a place can be used to change risk attitudes related to natural hazards.
The current study has a number of strengths and limitations. One important limitation is that we did not have a direct manipulation check for place-based attachment—had we included this in addition to our biophilia measure, we could have more clearly and precisely discerned the relationships between these variables. The balanced age sampling allowed comparisons to be made across young, middle aged and older adults. However, the results are based on self-report from participants in a paid online survey, which may limit generalizability. Further research on the impact of these inductions on behavior in non-experimental settings would be useful. Additionally, the sample used in this research was limited to American participants. Future work could evaluate whether these findings generalize cross-culturally [
The time of measurement may also have unintentionally affected the patterns of results: data was gathered from participants in the month following the 2016 presidential election in the United States. President-elect Trump had already signaled his intention to leave the Paris climate accords and to roll back a variety of EPA regulations. Public discussion of these developments may have affected the participants’ responses. In addition, evaluations of the impact of combining moral framing [
The world is experiencing two, simultaneous, global patterns: population aging and climate change. Despite generational differences in climate concerns [
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We appreciate and acknowledge that support for this research came from the Office of the Provost at Bucknell University.