Engaging Young People in Climate Change Action: A Scoping Review of Sustainability Programs

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Hohenhaus, Madeleine
Boddy, Jennifer
Rutherford, Shannon
Roiko, Anne
Hennessey, Natasha
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2023
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Abstract

Young people are stepping forward and engaging in or leading programs promoting climate action and sustainability. To optimize program outcomes, it is important to understand the nature of these programs, as well as their successes and enablers. Consequently, a scoping review was conducted across six databases, Taylor and Francis, Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, Sage and Wiley, to examine existing programs that promote climate change action amongst young people aged 12 to 25 years. The review sought to determine what is known about these programs and their outcomes by documenting what elements contribute to successful behavior changes in young people. Forty-eight articles were included in the review, with almost half of the studies from the United States. Eight elements recurred throughout the reviewed journal articles including intersecting external and internal factors contributing to reported behavior change. External factors included the social environment, place, knowledge, leadership and goal setting development that fostered internal factors that included, self-efficacy, identity, agency and action competence, and systems thinking. Learning from these programs to improve design and ensure sustainable outcomes is key to improving the capabilities of young people to continue responding to the climate challenge.

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Sustainability

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15

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5

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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Environmental politics

Environmental management

Science & Technology

Life Sciences & Biomedicine

Green & Sustainable Science & Technology

Environmental Sciences

Environmental Studies

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Hohenhaus, M; Boddy, J; Rutherford, S; Roiko, A; Hennessey, N, Engaging Young People in Climate Change Action: A Scoping Review of Sustainability Programs, Sustainability, 2023, 15 (5), pp. 4259

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