Mind the gap: Correcting young people's value misperceptions to elicit hope and local environmental action

Introduction: People show overwhelming similarities in their concern for people and planet but often fail to recognise these values in others.

Objectives: Two pre-registered studies identify the extent of this value misperception gap among young people, examine its consequences for environmental hope and engagement, and test whether the gap can be reduced.

Materials & Methods: Participants are young people aged 12-24, recruited from various regions across the UK through schools and online platforms. Study 1 (N=1141) was a cross-sectional study. Study 2 (expected N=1000) is a 5-wave longitudinal experiment that will be completed March 2025.

Results: In Study 1, 95% of participants agreed that self-transcendence values (e.g., helpfulness, caring for nature) are among their most important values, but they perceived their peers to care much less about these values. Participants who perceived a greater gap reported feeling more disconnected, more hopeless about environmental issues, less motivated to tackle these issues, and to engage less frequently in environmental activism. For Study 2, multilevel analyses will test an intervention helping young people to discover their shared values and using a digital consensus-building tool to exchange ideas on concrete, local environmental action (e.g., campaign to promote cycling). We expect that this intervention elicits greater social connection, environmental hope, motivation, and action.

Conclusions: By showing young people that together they can make a difference, we hope to break the cycle of dwindling hope and environmental disengagement, which is vital for an age group that needs resilience to deal with the climate crisis.