Doctoral Dissertation Research: Thinking ahead to do better now: Legacy-focused cognition and its link to environmental sustainability

无所不在的气候变率问题凸显了代际管理的重要性，环境可持续性已成为21世纪最公开、最紧迫的代际挑战之一。尽管如此，人们仍然很难真正理解当前的行为是如何对遥远的未来产生负面影响的。因此，激励人们在现在少一点自私，对未来多一点慷慨，是保障子孙后代福祉的基本步骤。通过本项目探索这种代际无私的动机具有多方面的科学意义，从促进对以遗产为中心的思维及其与环境可持续性的联系的科学理解，到展示在社会科学研究中使用尖端计算方法的优势。此外，该项目还告诉我们，如何利用根深蒂固的心理动机——建立身后遗产的动机——来促进环境健康，确保世世代代都能享受一个健康和可持续发展的世界。虽然先前的研究表明，反思一个人的死后遗产促进了与环境可持续性相关的关注和行为，但这些反思和影响的细节仍然不清楚，也没有得到充分的探索。在两项在线调查研究中，研究团队使用尖端的计算和传统的统计技术来阐明人们在报告他们想要的死后遗产时的想法（研究问题1），这些主题在人口群体之间可能有何不同（研究问题2），以及哪些主题与环境可持续性问题和行为呈正相关（研究问题3）。展示计算技术的进步如何通过效率和可扩展性来帮助社会科学研究，可能会激励未来的研究人员采用类似的方法。此外，通过该项目获得的见解有助于未来的研究人员和公共卫生组织开发/测试能够有效激发可持续性关注和行为的信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The omnipresent issue of climate variability has brought the importance of intergenerational stewardship to light, and environmental sustainability has become one of the most public and pressing intergenerational challenges of the 21st century. Still, it remains difficult for people to truly grasp how actions in the present can create negative consequences for those in the distant future. Thus, motivating people to be less selfish in the present and more generous toward the future is a fundamental step in safeguarding the well-being of future generations. Exploring motivations for this kind of intergenerational selflessness via the present project has multi-faceted scientific significance, from contributing to the scientific understanding of legacy-focused thinking and its link to environmental sustainability to demonstrating the advantages of using cutting edge computational methods in social science research. Furthermore, this project informs how a deeply rooted psychological motivation—the motivation to establish a posthumous legacy—can be leveraged to promote environmental health and ensure a healthy and sustainable world that generations can enjoy for many years to come. Although prior studies have demonstrated that reflecting on one’s posthumous legacy promotes concerns and behaviors related to environmental sustainability, the details of these reflections and effects remain unclear and underexplored. Across two online survey studies, the research team uses a mix of cutting-edge computational and traditional statistical techniques to illuminate what people are thinking when they report their desired posthumous legacy (Research Question 1), how these themes may differ between demographic groups (Research Question 2), and which themes are positively associated with environmental sustainability concerns and behaviors (Research Question 3). Showing how advancements in computational techniques can aid social scientific research via efficiency and scalability may inspire future researchers to adopt similar approaches. Additionally, insights gained through the project aid future researchers and public health organizations when developing/testing messages that can effectively motivate sustainability concerns and behaviors.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.