Social norms and climate-friendly behavior of adolescents

RESEARCH ARTICLE Social norms and climate-friendly behavior of adolescents Ann-Kathrin KoesslerID1,2,3☯*, Tobias VorlauferID2☯, Florian Fiebelkorn4 1 Institute of Environmental Planning, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany, 2 Alexander von Humboldt-Professorship of Environmental Economics, Institute of Environmental Systems Research and Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Osnabru¨ ck, Germany, 3 Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom, 4 Biology Didactics, Osnabru¨ck University, Osnabru¨ ck, Germany ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * koessler@umwelt.uni-hannover.de Abstract Adolescents are the decision-makers of the future, and as educational research shows, behaviors, habits, and attitudes established at young age strongly shape behavior in adult- hood. Therefore, it is important to understand what factors shape young people’s climate- relevant behavior. In this study, we examine how information about peer behavior affects adolescents’ perception of prevailing social norms and own decision-making. Experimen- tally, we manipulated whether adolescents received information about other young people’s (lack of) support for climate protection, operationalized as a donation to a CO2 offsetting scheme. We find that empirical expectations shifted for all age groups when the information revealed that peers donated nothing or only small amounts. Donation behavior and the nor- mative assessment, however, changed only in the younger age groups. Our study illustrates

the caution that must be exercised when others’ behavior becomes visible or is delibera- tively made salient in order to induce behavioral change, especially among young individuals. Introduction Limiting global warming and its devastating consequences is a defining task of our time [1]. To secure the livelihoods of present and future generations, societies need to transform how they produce, consume, and live, which for many means renouncing their own resources and comfort [2–4]. Social science research suggests that shifting social norms is a promising approach to elicit the behavioral change required to achieve sustainability [5–7]. Social norms are behavioral rules that individuals prefer to follow when they believe that (i) sufficiently many others follow the rule (empirical expectation) and (ii) sufficiently many others believe one should follow it and may be willing to sanction deviations (normative expectation) [8]. Thus, a change in the perception of what behavior is common and considered socially desir- able can encourage and reinforce climate-friendly behaviors. PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266847 April 27, 2022 1 / 16 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Koessler A-K, Vorlaufer T, Fiebelkorn F (2022) Social norms and climate-friendly behavior of adolescents. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0266847. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266847 Editor: Sonia Brito-Costa, Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra: Instituto Politecnico de Coimbra, PORTUGAL Received: December 8, 2021 Accepted: March 28, 2022

Published: April 27, 2022 Copyright: © 2022 Koessler et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are available at: http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Z6G54. Funding: Funding for this research was received from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation in the framework of the Alexander von Humboldt- Professorship held by Prof. Stefanie Engel, endowed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. https://www.humboldt- foundation.de/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.