The Northeast US and UK: are environmental attitudes different between the ages of 18 and 25?

Abstract

In today’s consistently mobile societies of the UK and Northeast US there seems to be an ever-increasing push to use less and conserve more. An individual’s attitudes towards global warming, melting sea ice, deforestation, recycling etc… alter from person to person. Research has shown that certain attitudes can or cannot influence a person to act pro-environmentally and provide environmental awareness in young adults. Young adults are said to be the future at solving global environmental problems, but which nation shows more concern. Attitudes, awareness, influences, age, education and pro-environmental behaviours were all assessed in trying to answer this. A survey was created on Survey Monkey and administered through Facebook twice in order to receive results. The survey contained multiplechoice, rating scales and open-ended questions to for qualitative responses. End results indicate the UK acknowledges a greater environmental concern over the Northeast US, but fails to practice as many pro-environmental behaviours. Nonetheless though, the results are so close in comparison that it is quite clear young adults of both nations show concern and have an overall positive attitude towards the environment. They each feel their governments do little to nothing in aiding the environment, and that lifestyle and quality of life influence their attitudes the most over parents and friends. Assessing behaviour of young adults is difficult in that they are very inconsistent with their behaviour and attitudes, which some of the results show.