The impact of parenthood on environmental attitudes and behaviour: a longitudinal investigation of the legacy hypothesis

Willingness to engage in sustainable actions may be limited by the psychological distance of climate change. In this study, we test the legacy hypothesis, which holds that having children leads parents to consider the legacy left to offspring in respect of environmental quality. Using the Understanding Society dataset, a longitudinal survey representative of the UK population (n = 18,176), we assess how having children may change people’s individual environmental attitudes and behaviour. Results indicate that having a new child is associated with a small decrease in the frequency of a few environmental behaviours. Only parents with already high environmental concern show a small increase in the desire to act more sustainably after the birth of their first child. Overall, the results do not provide evidence in support of the legacy hypothesis in terms of individual-level environmental attitudes and behaviours. We argue that the transition to parenthood is a time where concern is prioritised on the immediate wellbeing of the child and not on the future environmental threats

Citizenship Norms in Eastern Europe

Research on Eastern Europe stresses the weakness of its civil society and the lack of political and social involvement, neglecting the question: What do people themselves think it means to be a good citizen? This study looks at citizens’ definitions of good citizenship in Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, using 2002 European Social Survey data. We investigate mean levels of civic mindedness in these countries and perform regression analyses to investigate whether factors traditionally associated with civic and political participation are also correlated with citizenship norms across Eastern Europe. We show that mean levels of civic mindedness differ significantly across the four Eastern European countries. We find some support for theories on civic and political participation when explaining norms of citizenship, but also demonstrate that individual-level characteristics are differently related to citizenship norms across the countries of our study. Hence, our findings show that Eastern Europe is not a monolithic and homogeneous bloc, underscoring the importance of taking the specificities of countries into account

Mental models of food security in rural Mali

Recent estimates indicate that 12% of the global population is likely to have suffered from chronic hunger, due to lack of enough food for an active and healthy life. West Africa, specifically across the Sahel countries, is acutely vulnerable to food insecurity concerns. Mail is emblematic of this problem with approximately 4.6 million citizens considered food insecure. Food security poses formidable challenges. Studies have shown that in order to understand food insecurity and identify steps for effective intervention, there is a need to apprehend the food systems and food in/security in a holistic way beyond production alone. Understanding the behavioral aspects of food security is critical in the African context where agriculture, while oriented toward basic subsistence, remains embedded in social system including the social dynamics of households, extended families, and communities. This exploratory work focuses on developing a nuanced understanding of food security and adaptive behaviors to current challenges to food security at the household level with a distinct focus on inter- and intra-family behavioral dynamics in rural, southern Mali. Using mental models methodology, we developed two influence diagrams and a set of sub-models that represent rural households’ mental models of food security under traditional conditions and under conditions of external pressures. These models suggest that food security in rural Mali is at considerable risk due to the influence of external challenges, such as climate change, on traditional behaviors and a lack of easily accessible corresponding behavioral adaptations