Environmental concern and motivations of Polish youth for community action: Voices of a post-Communist generation

This research project addresses important issues in youth development, environmental education, and international perspectives on participation in civic projects. Since 1989, political and social transformations in Poland have created new possibilities for citizens to participate in environmental and community actions. This study explored Polish youth involvement and investigated the factors youth perceive as motivating or inhibiting their abilities to be active participants in the resolution of community and environmental issues. Research in youth development has shown that participation in community service can provide many positive developmental assets.; An integration of qualitative and quantitative methods provided multifaceted data to understand youth perspectives. In 15 focus groups across Poland, teens shared opinions on concerns for the future, environmental issues, and youth participation in community actions. Analysis of the focus group data informed the development of a proposed model of youth involvement, and the development of the Youth Environmental Concern and Action (YECA) survey. The model expands previous research by depicting the interaction of environmental concern and environmental action participation as cyclical, involving a suite of youth-specific motivation variables. Elements of the model were explored with the YECA survey of teenagers (N = 453) from a stratified random selection of schools.; Results indicate Polish youth are concerned about the environment. Girls had significantly higher environmental concern scores than boys. Six variables were identified as significantly correlated with environmental concern. This suite of variables explained 22.8% of the variance in Environmental Concern Index scores for boys and 14.7% of the variance for girls. Youth participation in environmental actions as measured by the Environmental Action Index (EAI) is low. Three variables were significantly correlated with the EAI scores, and these explain 12% of the variance for boys and 11% of the variance for girls.; Lack of opportunities, negative peer pressure and lack of adult support were commonly mentioned barriers to youth participation. Opportunities for involvement and affinity for nature were identified by the youth as enhancing their motivation to participate in environmental actions. The study includes analysis of transcripts and bivariate and multivariate analyses. Recommendations for environmental education programs and future research needs are included.