Why teenagers?

The main target of the behavioural interventions for the climate are adolescents, while accounting for multiplier effects on their families. Interventions are implemented at high schools by teachers of the educational centres as part of their regular teaching hours. The large literature on behavioural interventions for environmental behaviour, mainly focusing on nudging and choice architecture, focuses on adult populations (see Byerly et al., 2018 for a review) while the literature on intergenerational cooperation focuses on transmission of cooperative preferences from parents to children (e.g. Bettinger and Slonim, 2006; Chowdhury et al., 2022). Cooperate4Climate assesses the opposite transmission, testing for the first time whether behavioural interventions aiming to increase the cooperation by adolescents can have impacts on parents’ cooperation.

We need novel interventions that are highly effective: in impact size, in multiplier impacts and in generating long-lasting impact. Targeting adolescents is highly relevant because it can satisfy these goals: First, the clear threat that this crisis imposes on them, and more importantly, the opportunity of implementing action-boosting interventions in high schools that are more demanding than the typical nudges, support an expectation for stronger impacts. Second, adolescents can be drivers of change within their families, generating multiplier impacts. Previous research shows the relevance of interventions on adolescents in shaping climate opinions within their families (Lawson et al., 2019). And third, previous evidence shows that successful interventions on adolescents have long-term positive impacts on their future lives, including their future lives as leaders in adult society (Dahl et al., 2018). They are the adults of the near future and can have critical roles as a new pool of voters, middle actors (such as professionals), experts, and regulators, playing a relevant role in establishing low-carbon standards and practices (IPCC, 2022). By exercising voting rights, citizens define the ambition of governments’ climate policies. And middle actors – such as building managers, landlords, consultants, technology installers, or car dealers – influence behavioural patterns of other people and associated climate impacts. Similar comments apply to experts and regulators.

This project evaluates the impact of the behavioural interventions on adolescents and on their families in the short-, medium- and long-run. The first evaluation takes place immediately after the intervention, a second evaluation one year after the interventions, and the last evaluation three years after.