Understanding and measuring young people’s sustainability actions

Young people foster sustainability in many ways, ranging from low-effort personal practices to highly devoted sustainability actions. These actions and behaviors embody the sustainability agency of the youth. In this article, we shed light on the repertoire and dimensionality of the youth’s sustainability efforts. Using factor analytic methods to analyze a large survey sample (N = 940), we argue that the youth’s sustainability agency emerges in a multitude of actions, and that sustainability actions are distinct from traditional pro-environmental behaviors. However, the distinction between actions and behaviors is more about the degree of effort, commitment, and publicity, than about sustainability dimensions. We encourage researchers and educational specialists to consider sustainability actions and behaviors in a broad sense, including the continuums of individual–collective, public–private sphere, and low–high effort.