The differences of climate change perception, responsibility and climate-friendly behavior among generations and the main determinants of youth?s climate-friendly actions in the EU

The role of society to mitigate climate change is particularly important. However, generations, different age cohorts are differently related to and concerned about climate change. The main criticism of the young gener-ation is that they talk about climate change a lot but do not behave in a climate-friendly manner. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze the difference of climate change perception, responsibility and climate-friendly behavior among Baby Boomer generation, Generations X, Y and Z in all European Union (EU) countries. After applying the Chi-square test, the results showed that younger people in the EU tend to have the perception of climate change more often than their older counterparts. Moreover, people from younger generations tend to place responsibility of solving climate change on the business/industrial sectors and environmental groups more often than the preceding generations do. Furthermore, more of young people assumed personal responsibility, used environmentally friendly alternatives to personal cars, and considered carbon footprint before purchasing a product, as opposed to older generations. However, the youth separated waste and decreased the use of disposable items less comparing with older generations. Applying binary logistic regression, the results showed that climate change perception and placement of responsibility on environmental groups positively and statis-tically significantly influenced all climate-friendly actions of the youth. Personal responsibility statistically significantly decreased probability of all climate-friendly actions. Responsibility placement on the government and business/industrial sectors reduced the probability to carry out waste reduction behavior. Thus, this study revealed that young people are not always climate-friendly, and this study provides the insights into how to promote climate-friendly behavior among youths.

Automated summary

This paper analyzes the difference in climate change perception, responsibility, and climate-friendly behavior among different generations in the EU. The results show that younger generations have a higher awareness of climate change and place more responsibility on business/industrial sectors and environmental groups. However, they perform better in taking personal responsibility, using environmentally friendly alternatives, and considering carbon footprint, but less in waste separation and reducing the use of disposable items.