Testing Common Knowledge: Are Northern Europeans and Millennials More Concerned about the Environment?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for engaging in this important research, which I commend: I enjoyed reading it and I hope my comments below will be useful for improving further your manuscript.

Summary

This study aims to inquire about the effects of geographical origin/residence (North/South) and developmental generation (X/Millennial) on environmental attitudes, norms and behaviors. The need of this study is further emphasized by the importance and the timeliness of environmental issues: a segmented approach based on target populations may increase the understanding of the phenomenon and improve forthcoming interventions. Furthermore, the authors include a (limited) discussion of some of the implications of their findings to policy.

Extended comments

In general, there are several shortcomings concerning the English language and I would recommend the authors to engage a proofreader or pay closer attention to their choice of words and formulations (including the abstract).

In section 1.2.1 paragraph 4, the authors seem to be referring to the attitude-behavior (or value-behavior) gap, although without explicit reference. This may be important to acknowledge, as the authors focus specifically on attitudes, whether they are self-reported or inferred from other aggregate data. Furthermore, it may possibly enhance the depth of discussing attitudes after the presentation of results.

The aims of the study are scattered in different sections, rather than being clearly stated in one place: for example, there are aims at the end of section 1, 1.1.3 (focus), 1.2.2, and so on.

There is no operationalization of what “northerners” and “southerners” refer to in the statement of hypotheses. Similarly, it is not clear what the threshold of higher education is and why it is important to report with the other basic demographics of the sample size. The criteria for North and South are eventually made clear in section 2.2.1, but why and how were the 3 countries representing each dichotomous division selected? Especially if the data was available (say for example, Icelanders in the North group and Greeks in the South group)

The presentation of results could be improved regarding language clarity and reporting the statistical significance levels from the table. The resolution of the figures should be increased for improving legibility.

In the discussion section, the only acknowledged limitation concerns the risk of social desirability bias. There is no mention to the low or very low effect sizes associated with the results of the statistically significant MANOVA results. Furthermore, although this is somehow open to discussion within the psychological sciences, the authors analyze ordinal variables as continuous as far as their analyses and interpretations are concerned. Although they “controlled for” age, gender and education, there is no reference to neither this procedure in the methods section nor their discussion after the presentation of results.

Other issues

Lines 37-38 reads very general: I suggest delete or develop further (e.g., on which dimensions should these improvements focus)

The authors use APA 6^th ed. style for referencing their sources in-text, but then adopt the Journal’s referencing style in the reference list. This may be eventually corrected with the help of the editorial team, but I recommend consistency throughout the manuscript concerning the progressive numbering.

I wonder whether it was not possible to include the results from Eurobarometer 2019: has it not been published at the time of writing? This way, the data will be even more recent, considering the relatively short time span considered by the authors when

Line 163: I strongly disagree with the statement that “generation exerts […] influence on behavior”, which implies not only a causal relationship, but also a temporal one. Rather, there may be another type of relationship, but it should not postulate agency from an arbitrarily established categorization based on birth year.

Line 176: the reference for this six-fold distinction is missing.

Line 188: there is no comparator to the situation of youths in Spain: within the country nor between.

Line 197: reference to Deloitte’s report is missing

Line 229: typo “2”

Line 298: I would advise against the use the word “depend” (please see comment above)

Lines 362-367 repeat to some extent the same information that was already presented in the results section; instead, the authors could expand on these findings with possible explanations and interpretations of covariates which may have led to opposite results from the hypotheses.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of

Testing common knowledge: Are Northern Europeans and millennials more concerned about the Environment?

 

I have read the manuscript with great interest and I believe it to be a valuable and interesting addition to the literature. The manuscript explores how young people view the environmental crisis and whether there are regional differences in their approach. Even though the manuscript is quite well written, it still needs some work. Hopefully, my comments will help the authors in improving their work.

 

1. The authors seem to be overly focused on the work of Steg and her colleagues. There are a variety of authors that have studied norms: Klockner, Cialdini, Girskevicius; attitudes have been an integral component of the very popular theory of planned behavior (Ajzen). So I ask the authors to provide a mode balanced literature review.
2. Some language editing is needed.
3. I am not completely convinced by the classification of countries into supposedly homogenous regions. I would expect some confirmatory analysis to show that these regions are indeed homogenous. My suggestion would be to run a cluster analysis to group regions, rather than assuming that countries are similar only because of their geographical proximity.
4. I am not convinced of the validity of the dependent variables that deal with taxes, subsidies, or legal bans. Answers to these questions have to do a lot with one’s personal political affiliation and political beliefs, thus these dependent variables are very much confounded. I suggest looking through the dataset to see if there are any variables on political beliefs that you can use as control variables. The authors mention that they controlled for gender, education, and ideology, but these controls are not thoroughly described in the manuscript. What do the authors mean by “ideology”? How was it measured? Are there any alternative measures in the dataset? This is extremely important.
5. When additional controls have been entered into the analysis and thoroughly discussed when describing the measures, the discussion will surely change, so I refrain from commenting on it at the present time.

 

Overall, the manuscript tackles an interesting question that I myself want to see answered. But I want to see it answered in a robust and reliable manner. While the analysis is quite straightforward, the data and the conclusions that will follow will be very much important and useful, thus the article is both accessible to a wide readership and useful for all interested parties. I look forward to reading the revised version of the manuscript.

 

I wish the authors the best of luck in their ongoing and future research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I thank the authors for working further with the manuscript and addressing the previous comments that I raised. I believe that the manuscript has gained both precision and clarity since its previous version and the language has been greatly improved.

I commend the authors for their important work on exploring generational and provenience interactions regarding environmental attitudes, norms and behaviors and I look forward to seeing their work featured on this Journal. All my concerns and comments seem to have been adequately addressed.

Thank you for letting me review this work and I wish the authors the best of luck ahead with their research!

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of the revised manuscript

Testing common knowledge: Are Northern Europeans and millennials more concerned about the environment?

 

The authors have addressed all of my comments sufficiently. At this point, the authors need to make sure that the article is formatted correctly (some citations are still presented in APA style), and that there are no language or editing mistakes.