The role of empathy and sustainability anxiety in shaping youth aspirations for education and career

This study examines how sustainability-related anxiety (SRA) is shaped by empathy and socioeconomic factors, and how these dynamics influence students’ educational and career orientations. Drawing on Value–Belief–Norm theory, Career Construction Theory, and Self-Determination Theory, SRA is conceptualised as both an emotional outcome of empathic sensitivity and a motivational driver of future-oriented learning choices. The analysis is based on a global dataset from the Youth Talks initiative, comprising responses from over 41,000 participants across 212 countries. The study employs a mixed-methods approach in which open-ended responses were organised into clusters using natural language processing and subsequently transformed into quantitative indicators through a structured coding procedure, enabling the integration of large-scale qualitative insights into a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling framework. Results indicate that empathy significantly increases SRA, whereas socioeconomic factors, such as household income, have differential effects on empathic sensitivity. Although effect sizes are modest, consistent relationships observed across a highly diverse global sample reveal stable patterns in how young people emotionally engage with sustainability challenges. The findings highlight the role of emotional processes in shaping sustainability-related motivations and suggest that empathy-driven concern may influence how students orient their educational and career pathways in response to global challenges. This study contributes by advancing an integrated theoretical framework and demonstrating a scalable methodological approach for incorporating open-ended responses into large-scale quantitative modelling in cross-cultural research.