Abstract
Abstract
Learning to drive is a coveted and exciting rite of passage for many teens. What if during this time, however, teens practiced teaching others about air pollution and how responsible driving strategies impact air quality (e.g., carpooling, refraining from idling, trip‐chaining, riding the bus, etc.)? This idea was the basis for a 2017 clean‐air poster contest involving over 400 teens across six high schools in Cache Valley, Utah, a community that suffers occasionally from some of the worst air pollution in the nation, particularly during winter inversion season. As Utah State University faculty, we piloted the contest two years earlier at a local high school as part of a broader university‐community engagement initiative addressing sustainability issues. This article provides an overview of the literature on children's influence on others in marketing and social settings and a review of our past clean‐air poster contests that were piloted on smaller scales. Details about the launch and outcomes of the expanded 2017 Utah High School Clean Air Poster contest as the context for educating teens about air pollution and clean air actions are discussed, along with the results of a voluntary post‐contest survey of contestants' self‐reported direct impacts and their social influence on others. We investigated both the contestants' self‐reported direct personal behavioral impacts and their unprompted behavioral influence on others in what was termed the “Inconvenient Youth” effect because adults often feel uncomfortable having youth instruct them about pro‐social behaviors. Parents, in particular, feel obliged to comply in order to maintain their children's respect. Approximately two‐thirds of surveyed contestants reported engaging others, primarily parents and siblings, about clean air actions. Only 43 percent believed, however, that they had actually changed others' behaviors. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the study and future research directions to help guide others crafting their own school‐based environmental education initiatives.
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