Although humanity is already experiencing negative consequences of climate change, future generations may experience even worse outcomes in the absence of concerted, collective effort to mitigate and adapt. At the same time, temporal and interpersonal discounting breed inaction in the face of collective action problems that unfold over long time horizons such as climate change. Some research suggests that higher levels of perceived responsibility to future generations is associated with greater motivation to act on climate change. We re-evaluated this claim in a large (N = 13,749), highly-powered, and nationally representative sample of the U.S. population. We found that people report feeling a high amount of responsibility to protect the environment on behalf of future generations. This sense of responsibility is endorsed more strongly than other reasons for addressing climate change and appears to be endorsed to a high degree across geographic regions, income levels, education attainment, gender, race, generation status, religious affiliation and political party membership. Further, even after accounting for established demographic predictors of proenvironmental behavior, perceived responsibility to future generations predicted a host (i.e., 27) of proenvironmental outcomes. We conclude that by potentially targeting a widely endorsed responsibility, interventions might prove effective across the political and religious spectrum in American society.

尽管人类已经在经历气候变化的负面后果，但如果缺乏协调一致的集体努力来缓解和适应，子孙后代可能会经历更糟糕的后果。与此同时，面对气候变化等长期出现的集体行动问题，时间和人际贴现会导致无所作为。一些研究表明，对子孙后代的责任感越高，应对气候变化的动力就越大。我们在大量（N = 13,749）、高强度且具有全国代表性的美国人口样本中重新评估了这一说法。我们发现，人们表示对代表子孙后代保护环境负有重大责任。这种责任感比应对气候变化的其他原因得到了更强烈的认可，并且似乎在各个地理区域、收入水平、教育程度、性别、种族、世代地位、宗教信仰和政党成员身份方面都得到了高度认可。此外，即使在考虑了亲环境行为的既定人口预测因素之后，对子孙后代的感知责任也预测了许多（即27）亲环境结果。我们的结论是，通过潜在地针对广泛认可的责任，干预措施可能会在美国社会的政治和宗教领域发挥作用。