Research project

GREENTEENS is a cross-national, longitudinal-experimental research project that aims to understand the psychological barriers and facilitators of eco-friendly behaviour in adolescence. The project started in September 2020 and will continue through August 2025.

Growing up amid the climate crisis

The world faces an unprecedented climate crisis, and human activity is its root cause. The consequences of the climate crisis will especially affect the world’s children and young people. UNICEF estimates that approximately half of today’s young people are at extremely high risk of the impacts of climate change (e.g., droughts, floods, fires, and storms) as it unfolds in the next decades. At the same time, young people have potential to be the frontrunners in the collective green behaviour change that the world needs. They are the citizens and leaders of the future, and they are eager to help mitigate climate change right now. The GREENTEENS project will generate new knowledge on how to help adolescents do so.

Aims of the GREENTEENS project

GREENTEENS aims to develop a new approach to understanding and promoting adolescents’ eco-friendly behaviour. It aims to generate understanding of what sometimes keeps adolescents from engaging in eco-friendly behaviour. And it devises methods to help youth contribute to a sustainable future for themselves and generations to come.

We propose that adolescents will be intrinsically motivated to act sustainably if they think that doing so fulfills what they deeply care about: their widespread and powerful needs for autonomy and peer status. Adolescents are driven to experience agency over their lives and to be approved of, and respected by, their peers. Can we work with these psychological forces of nature to understand and promote green behaviour change?

We conduct research in three countries: China, Colombia, and the Netherlands. We bridge multiple methods and levels of measurement. In longitudinal studies, we track the psychological development, sustainable attitudes and behaviour of adolescents over multiple years. In experimental studies - both in the laboratory and in real-life settings such as schools and cinemas - we investigate which policies can cultivate sustainable attitudes and behaviour in adolescents.