What Motivates Young People to Act Green: A Comparison of High School Students, University Students, and Young Workers in a Developing Country

Young people in developing countries play a pivotal role in advancing sustainable practices; however, little is known about whether the psychological determinants behind their pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) differ across developmental stages This study integrates the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) with environmental information exposure to explain young people’s PEBs and to examine their developmental heterogeneity, an aspect often overlooked in prior research. Using survey data from young people in Hue City, Vietnam ( n = 995), we applied multigroup structural equation modeling to compare high school students, university students, and young workers. The integrated model explains 43.1% of the variance in PEBs. Intention is positively predicted by self-efficacy, subjective norm, attitude, and perceived vulnerability, and negatively predicted by reward and cost orientation. PEBs are directly predicted by intention, self-efficacy, and environmental information exposure. Subgroup contrasts reveal that response cost is negligible for high school students but a strong deterrent for older groups; self-efficacy directly predicts behavior only among university students and young workers; and environmental information exposure directly predicts behavior only among high school students. The findings underscore the importance of recognizing developmental heterogeneity among young people and suggest tailoring interventions to developmental stages, particularly in climate-vulnerable developing and emerging Asian contexts.