Green Teens: Understanding and Promoting Adolescents’ Sustainable Engagement

Young people are disproportionally impacted by heatwaves, floods, droughts, and other impacts of climate change. They also have unique potential to catalyze the transformative sustainable change that the world needs now. How can this potential be leveraged? In this perspective, we present the sustainability motive-alignment hypothesis to understand and harness young peoples’, especially adolescents’, potential for sustainable engagement. The hypothesis posits that adolescents will be internally motivated to engage in sustainable behavior when they construe such behavior as a means of pursuing their personal motives for autonomy and status. The hypothesis also suggests that sustainability-promoting policies (educational programs, campaigns) can be improved by using techniques that reshape how adolescents construe sustainability—from a low-priority chore to an activity that embodies a personal priority. We discuss research priorities to expand and evaluate the sustainability motive-alignment hypothesis and to help better understand the psychological forces underlying adolescents’ sustainable engagement.