Socialising effects of recession and issue salience on environmental attitudes

Despite long-standing predictions derived from post-materialist theory, recent cohorts are not uniformly more supportive of environmental protection than their older counterparts. However, little is known about why they are not always more pro-environmental, or why this pattern varies across contexts. Combining insights from the ‘economy–environment trade-off’ literature and the political socialisation hypothesis, I argue that experiencing economic recessions during the impressionable years (ages 18–25) dampens support for environmental protection over the long term, but that the salience of environmental issues in election campaigns moderates these effects. Using four waves (1993–2020) of the ISSP Environment Module across 29 OECD democracies, I employ multilevel Age–Period–Cohort models to test these hypotheses. The results show that early-adulthood recession exposure reduces willingness to pay for environmental protection. However, these adverse effects diminish when environmental issues are salient in electoral politics during the impressionable years. The findings elaborate on the post-materialist account of environmental attitudes by demonstrating how economic and political contexts jointly shape generational divides in environmental attitudes.