The futility and fatality of incremental action: motivations and barriers among undergraduates for environmental action that matters

Monty Hempel was deeply engaged with the impact of sustainability education on student values and behavior. An important question that he posed was How can sustainability education provide a sound basis for the transformation of student learning? This question is highly relevant for the education of young adults—the students who pass through our classrooms—who will deal with the consequences of environmental crises such as climate change. Even though sustainability education is prevalent across college campuses, there is a disconnect between environmental concern and action. To examine this disconnect, we use a mixed methods approach to ask, What environmental issues concern young adults? What pro-environmental activities do they undertake? and What are the motivations and barriers for engaging in pro-environmental action? We led 93 undergraduate students from an introductory undergraduate environmental studies course to conduct 143 structured interviews about the environmental behaviors of their peers. While students cite large-scale systemic issues like climate change and the government-corporate nexus as key concerns, 97% of the reported behaviors in response to these issues were one-time, individualistic, incremental actions. Of the 143 interviewees, 59% reported taking only incremental actions. Less than 5% of students reported transformative actions toward systemic change, and only 3% reported transformative actions such as coordinated political mobilization. Students recognize the limitations of their incremental actions—they consider a lack of self-efficacy and community as barriers to transformative activities. Based on these findings and the reflections of students conducting interviews, we offer suggestions for designing educational interventions to empower young adults to engage in environmental action that matters.