A great number of social and environmental issues our society is facing today (e.g., climate change) necessitate action in the present in order to benefit future others. Perceptions of responsibility towards future generations have been shown to increase intergenerational prosociality and combat intertemporal discounting. However, the degree to which these findings are generalizable across samples and valid in the context of environmental issues remains unknown. We utilized data obtained from the Public Religion Research Institute to examine the association of perceived responsibility towards future generations with proenvironmental attitudes in a large and representative sample of the US population. Across a wide variety of proenvironmental outcomes and controlling for key demographic covariates (e.g., political ideology, religiosity), our results suggest that perceived responsibility towards future generations has a robust relationship with proenvironmental attitudes. Increasing and leveraging perceptions of responsibility towards future others may be a powerful tool for promoting intergenerational environmental concern and action.

我们社会今天面临的大量社会和环境问题（例如气候变化）需要在当下采取行动，以造福未来的其他人。对后代的责任感已被证明可以增加代际亲社会性并对抗跨期折扣。然而，这些发现在样本中的推广程度以及在环境问题的背景下有效的程度仍然未知。我们利用从公共宗教研究所获得的数据，在美国人口的大量代表性样本中研究了对后代的感知责任与环保态度之间的关联。在各种有利于环境的结果和控制关键的人口统计协变量（例如政治意识形态、宗教信仰）中，我们的结果表明，对子孙后代的责任感与环保态度有着密切的关系。增加和利用对未来他人的责任感可能是促进代际环境关注和行动的有力工具。