Youth Perception on Climate Change and Sustainable Consumption

Abstract

This paper reviews the awareness level of youth on climate change issues by exploring how youth views climate change and their reaction to it. The paper also explores the social dimensions of climate change and how to promote energy-saving behaviour. This paper adopted the PRISMA systematic review methodology in selecting research articles from two scientific web databases: Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). 38 research papers were examined in-depth and categorised into three themes, youth and sustainable consumption; the impact of social media on youth’s awareness; and the role of support systems such as parents, educational institutions, and peers. From this review, we summarised that the youth have a relatively elevated level of knowledge regarding the climate change crisis due to the vast and readily available information from the internet and the increasingly popular social media platforms. Our findings suggest that future research should focus on surrounding support systems that can enhance youth motivation in combating climate change. Furthermore, providing knowledge and information on climate change alone is no longer sufficient; instead, the youth want to be informed of the actions they can immediately partake in.