Perceived responsibility towards future generations and environmental concern: Convergent evidence across multiple outcomes in a large, nationally representative sample

A great number of social and environmental issues our society is facing today (e.g., climate change) necessitate action in the present in order to benefit future others. Perceptions of responsibility towards future generations have been shown to increase intergenerational prosociality and combat intertemporal discounting. However, the degree to which these findings are generalizable across samples and valid in the context of environmental issues remains unknown. We utilized data obtained from the Public Religion Research Institute to examine the association of perceived responsibility towards future generations with proenvironmental attitudes in a large and representative sample of the US population. Across a wide variety of proenvironmental outcomes and controlling for key demographic covariates (e.g., political ideology, religiosity), our results suggest that perceived responsibility towards future generations has a robust relationship with proenvironmental attitudes. Increasing and leveraging perceptions of responsibility towards future others may be a powerful tool for promoting intergenerational environmental concern and action.