Adolescence and Ecology (Ad-ECO): how emotions and design workshops can stimulate the engagement of adolescents in eco-responsible processes? – Ad-ECO

Considerable efforts have been devoted at identifying the effects of emotion-evoking stimuli on adults’ willingness to engaged pro-environmental behaviors , but surprisingly there are to date few study that have examined whether these effects change with age during adolescence. This lack of knowledge is surprising given that 1) recent investigations provide evidence that adolescence is a specific time-window during which emotional sensitivity appears to be particularly important and might be a critical factor to explain the development of prosocial behavior at this age and 2) the negative effects of human activities on the environment are increasingly visible and request concrete actions. Therefore, the aim of the Ad-Eco project will be to determine the extent to which positive (e.g., joy, pride) or negative (e.g., sadness, guilt) emotional induction procedures can stimulate the will of adolescents to engage in more eco-responsible practices. Critically, the project will go beyond the simple collection of their intentions to act by examining their decision to participate in design workshops set up at school and aimed at exploring original solutions to solve ecological problems. As such, the originality of the Ad-Eco project rests on (a) its developmental perspective (from early adolescence to adults), and (b) its translational nature (from the lab to school). The Ad-Eco project can have an high impact not only for fundamental research by refining models of the influence of emotions on willingness to engaged pro-environmental behaviors but also for education by providing tools to help adolescents and young adults overcome systematic difficulties they might face to solve creatively environmental problems.