Children-led environmental communication fosters their own and parents' conservation behavior

Carbon neutrality is one effective way to mitigate climate change, and it requires the efforts of all sectors of society. Researchers have developed several communication strategies to encourage climate collective action, but they have mainly focused on adults. We propose children-led environmental communication is a productive pathway for promoting collective action. The present study, using a total of 458 matched household-level survey data and qualitative data from eight children, explored the role of children-led environmental communication. The results show that: (1) Children-led environmental communication facilitates their own climate change worry which in turn leads to conservation behaviors. (2) For parents with little literacy of carbon neutrality, their climate change worry is positively predicted by environmental communication led by their children which also leads to conservation behaviors. (3) Climate change education promotes children-led environmental communication by increasing carbon neutrality knowledge. In conclusion, children-led environmental communication is driven by climate change education, which in turn promotes conservation behavior in children as well as in their parents. We suggest that educators and communicators could consider children-led environmental communication as a new breakthrough in promoting collective action to mitigate climate change.