Parental Participation in the Environment: Scale Validation Across Parental Role, Income, and Region

Abstract

Parental participation has gained significant attention in environmental psychology, which has revealed a need for an instrument that can measure parental participation with children regarding environmental issues. The present study met this need by validating the parental participation in the environment (PPE) scale. This process began with 45 Chinese parents participating in an individual interview and group discussions, which helped generate a list of eighteen parent-child environmental activities. The activities were then modified and validated in the current study with a diverse group of 969 parents recruited from six major Chinese cities. Both score structure evidence and generalizability evidence were obtained within this sample, and psychometric tests suggested a single factor construct with nine items. Once the PPE scale was revised, it showed measurement invariance across the parent who responded to the items (mother vs. father), across the child’s primary caregiver (mother vs. father vs. grandparent), across the family’s living region (North China vs. South China), as well as across the family’s income group. Finally, evidence based on relations to other variables showed a relationship among parents’ PPE, pro-environmental behavior, and connectedness with nature. As a result, the study provided a novel measure to assess pro-environmental socialization via parental participation.

Measuring Pro-Environmental Behavior Triggered by Environmental Values

“…On the other hand, Grønhøj and Thøgersen [ 36 ] found that parents with higher socioeconomic status were most likely to perform pro-environmental behavior as they have access to educational opportunities and understand the values better and thus have more potential to inspire their children. In addition, Jia et al [ 9 ] argue that parents have a crucial role to participate with their children in environmental issues to ensure intergenerational transmission of pro-environmental behaviors. Based on the current study’s findings, the intergenerational transmission of pro-environmental behaviors needs to be from the students to the parents who are of low socioeconomic background.…”

“…Hence, the parents’ action towards pro-environmental behavior directly and contingently influences their children to act the same. Furthermore, parents with higher socioeconomic status appear to be the most likely to perform pro-environmental behavior as they have access to educational opportunities and understand the values better and thus, have more potential to inspire their children [ 9 , 36 ]. In this regard, intergenerational influence of attitudes, values and behavior towards the environment would proliferate from the parents to the children.…”

“…This shows that environmental and financial factors contribute to the practice of sustainable consumption. Even though these two studies focus on children or adolescents as a targeted group, in terms of intergenerational learning, parents can influence their children’s environmental behavior and vice versa [ 9 ].…”

Revisiting Social Value Orientations and Environmental Attitude–Identity–Intention in Decomposed Games

“…It is possible for leadership activities to require a high level of time commitment and involvement, which may be derived in the future as a result of personal interest in environmental issues [ 13 ]. Further research should investigate how different environmental actions are developed and socialized [ 33 , 34 , 35 ].…”

Family Causes of Psychological Problems of Junior Middle School Students From Single-Parent Families and Their Effects on School Performance

“…From the theory of developmental psychology, it can be concluded that the influence of family upbringing style on children is great. Jia, Sorgente and Yu (2022) found parents can pass on values, beliefs and behaviours to their children, and their involvement helps children internalise and learn social values and behaviours. For instance, boys in families where 66.7% of parents were violent were more susceptible to aggressive behaviour (Arinin & Aleksandrova, 2021).…”