Will Millennials save the world? The effect of age and generational differences on environmental concern

Highlights

• No patterns in response to environmental loss due to age or generation.

• Biospherism value positively predicts perceived severity of environmental loss.

• Increased biospherism results in commitment to take future environmental action.

• Politically conservative participants perceived low severity of environmental loss.

• Conservative political orientation led to decrease in future environmental action.

Abstract

Are younger people, defined by age, or younger generations, defined by cohort-level measures, more concerned about declines in environmental health when compared to their older counterparts within the United States? Related, are these same people more willing to support policy actions aimed at preventing future losses when compared to older adults? In spite of reporting by the U.S. popular press about the heightened environmental consciousness of Millennials, prior research offers conflicting answers. Scholarship focusing on age effects suggests that the answer to both questions is yes due to the dampening of environmental concern and action in older adults. More recent applied research on climate related risks and risk management options, by contrast, suggest that the answer to both questions is no, and that there is no difference in climate concern and risk mitigation between younger and older adults. In an attempt to disentangle these contradictory viewpoints, we undertook a study in which respondents in the United States characterized by age and generational cohort were presented with small and large hypothetical losses due to climate change. These same participants were then asked to indicate their support for future policy actions aimed at stemming these environmental losses. Overall, our data does not indicate that younger generations experience potential losses as more acute than older generations; neither age nor generational cohort correlated with the perceived severity of environmental losses nor support for future actions to prevent them. More robust predictors of both dependent variables were environmental value orientations (biospherism) and self-reported political orientation.

Introduction

As we enter the next federal election cycle in the United States, there is a popular narrative emerging about the importance of motivating and mobilizing younger voters because they are believed to care more about the environment. This response is in part due to actions by the current U.S. President, who during his first three years in office has made significant attempts to roll back existing environmental protections. These decisions by the Trump administration have prompted scientists, citizens, and some politicians to organize in opposition to further executive action that would place the environment at risk. One of the most prominent examples of environmentalism during Trump's first year in the White House was the March for Science, which took place on Earth Day in 2017. Prominent during this, his third year, is the effort to continue to upset the current balance of power in the United States government during the next national election in 2020; key to this effort is the mobilization of younger voters¹—primarily Millennials—who are believed to be more concerned about, and highly motivated, to protect the environment than their counterparts who were born earlier.

Given the popular narrative that is currently emerging about the importance of motivating and mobilizing younger voters in the United States, it is important to explore if the hope placed in younger people to be more concerned about—and to help protect—environmental health is appropriate. At the same time, we asked if individuals from younger generations could or should really be expected to care more about the declining health of the environment—and be more willing to act to safeguard it—than individuals from older generations.

Prior research suggests that older people tend to express lower levels of relative concern for the environment—and a dampened willingness to act to protect it—than do younger people (Casey and Scott, 2006). In an influential review, Van Liere and Dunlap (1980) proposed that lower levels of concern about the environment among older people (relative to younger people) may be due to how individuals of different ages act to maintain or change their relative position within the dominant social order. Akin to the status quo bias (Kahneman et al., 1991) expressing concern about environmental quality, along with actions aimed at protecting it, may be viewed as disruptive to the existing social order. Thus, concern and action may be thought of as posing the greatest relative threat to those who stand to lose the most because their positions within society are most entrenched – namely, representatives of older generations. This, in turn, motivates older people—relative to younger people—to think and act in ways that protect their existing social status and identity.

For every example of greater concern on the part of younger people about the health of the environment—or the willingness to act on them—there is also evidence to the contrary. In the context of climate change, for example, a study of risk perceptions across six different countries (the United States, Canada, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland) found a significant effect of the age of participants in only one of them: Switzerland (Shi et al. 2015, 2016). A multi-country follow-up study on support for measures aimed at mitigating climate change risk through geoengineering found that the age of participants was a non-factor (Visschers et al., 2017).

Beyond the absence of an age effect in the direction of younger people, a recent review by Gifford and Nilsson (2014) suggests that older individuals are the ones who are more concerned about the environment, and who report a greater affinity toward engaging in a broad array of smaller-scale pro-environmental behaviors (e.g., purchasing fair-trade goods and recycling). They hypothesize that this observation may be a function of generational cohort-level (vs. strictly age-related) differences; e.g., certain events such as the importance of being a frugal environmental steward during the Great Depression in the 1930s, and during wartime experiences of the 1940s, may have had a greater effect on the behaviors of people from older generations than they did on people from younger generations, the latter of which were not alive to experience these events. Alternatively, as environmental concern has been positively associated with education and income it may be that older individuals are more likely to have increased dispensable income to engage with pro-environmental behaviors (Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980).

A generation can be defined as a group of individuals who were born within a defined period of time and, importantly, have experienced consequential social and historical events at key developmental stages of their life histories (Smola and Sutton, 2002; Twenge et al., 2010). The lasting effects of these shared events remain relatively constant over an individuals’ entire life and creates generational characteristics that those in the cohort share. These characteristics may include a shared world view, values, and attitudes (Kupperschmidt, 2000). Ultimately, this perspective “stays with the individuals throughout their lives and is the anchor against which later experiences are interpreted” (Scott, 2000, pg. 356).

When considering environmental concern from the perspective of generational cohort-level differences, there is evidence of lower levels of concern in older individuals. Among a series of traits and preferences—older generations within the U.S. are thought to be more conservative. This orientation leads to a tendency to focus on business and economic growth (McCright and Dunlap, 2010) when compared to younger generations (Egri and Ralston, 2004). The more conservative value orientations that are ascribed to older generations have not been associated with high levels of environmental concern (e.g., L'Orange Seigo et al., 2014; Shi et al., 2016; Visschers et al., 2017). We're also led to believe that older individuals ascribe to hierarchical value orientations, whereas younger generations tend toward egalitarianism and seek situations that offer collaboration and a sense of purpose.

In support of this idea, younger generations prioritize contemporary policy issues related to sustainability and the environment ahead of issues like civil rights or economic reform, the latter of which tend to be more prevalent among older generations (Benderev, 2014). Furthermore, younger generations—in contrast to their older counterparts—self-report that they would prefer products and policies that lessen humans’ impact upon the environment, even if it means that the monetary cost of consumption will increase (Littrell et al., 2005). Indeed, it seems that Millennials are driving businesses and political leaders to make sustainability a primary concern (Smith and Brower, 2012). Overall, there is a belief that younger generations are poised to act to protect the environment (Timm, 2014).

Overall, the effect of age and generational cohort on concern about environmental health is, at best, inconsistent (Wood and Vedlitz, 2007; Malka et al., 2009). There are several generational factors that are thought to influence people's concern about environmental health, and their willingness to support measures aimed at improving it: age, generational cohort, political orientation, and a series of prominent value orientations (e.g., egoism, altruism).

With this as backdrop, our research asked whether younger people (defined by age), or younger generations (defined by cohort-level measures), are more concerned about declines in environmental health, and if they would be more willing to support policy actions aimed at preventing future losses, when compared to older people or older generations? Alternatively, if age or generation do not impact perceived severity of the loss or future action, is there another pattern of decision-making that can be observed? In addition, because cohort-level differences across generations are frequently discussed alongside cultural and political differences, our research sought to clarify the effect of education, income, political and value orientations on these same dependent measures.