On September 26^th Judith van de Wetering defended her dissertation entitled “Frontrunners for the Future: Understanding and Promoting Adolescents’ Pro-Environmental Engagement” at Utrecht University. Judith studied how adolescents are impacted by and can contribute to the climate crisis.

If we want to secure a habitable planet for future generations, we must rapidly and extensively change our behavior. While this is a great challenge, Judiths dissertation shows that, from a young age, people are motivated to adopt pro-environmental behaviors when they perceive such efforts as aligned with their personal motives. Judiths dissertation offers a novel approach to promoting adolescent behavior change in the context of climate change. She found that climate change communication that resonates with adolescents’ key developmental motives to establish autonomy and gain peer status motivates them to adopt pro-environmental behaviors. She also found that communication that is attuned to adolescents’ motives generally elicits more positive and activating emotions (e.g., hope) while reducing negative and deactivating emotions (e.g., hopelessness).

In collaboration with Studio Wetenschap, Judith published an accessible magazine on her dissertation (in Dutch) here.

The full dissertation is available (in English) here.