Dinner-Table Talks About Civic Life May Steer Teens Toward Protecting the Sea

When it comes to protecting the ocean, the most powerful influence on a teenager might not be a documentary, a school campaign, or a viral video, but a conversation at the kitchen table. A new study from Italian researchers suggests that the way parents and adolescents talk about civic and social issues at home is linked to how responsible young people feel toward the sea, and that this connection appears to travel through the kinds of life goals teenagers set for themselves. The findings, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, offer a psychological roadmap for understanding how environmental commitment takes root during adolescence.

The research team, led by Federica Papa and Francesca Cuzzocrea of the University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro, together with Rosalba Larcan and Francesca Liga of the University of Messina, set out to untangle a question that has long interested environmental psychologists: why do some adolescents come to see themselves as stewards of the marine environment while others, raised in the same coastal communities and exposed to the same media messages, do not? The answer they propose involves two interacting forces, one relational and one motivational. The relational force is parent-child civic communication, the everyday exchange between parents and teenagers about social issues, community problems, and the responsibilities citizens have to one another and to shared resources. The motivational force is the orientation of a young person’s life goals, specifically whether those goals are intrinsic or extrinsic in character.

The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goals comes from decades of motivation research. Intrinsic goals are those centered on personal growth, meaningful relationships, community contribution, and self-acceptance, aims that are satisfying in themselves. Extrinsic goals, by contrast, center on external markers such as wealth, fame, and physical image, aims whose value depends largely on the approval of others. Previous work in self-determination theory has shown that people who prioritize intrinsic aspirations tend to report greater well-being and, relevantly here, stronger pro-environmental and prosocial attitudes. The Italian team hypothesized that this motivational orientation might be a key bridge between what happens inside the family and how adolescents behave toward the marine environment.

To test these ideas, the researchers recruited 277 adolescents aged between 11 and 17 years, with a mean age of 13.75 years and a standard deviation of 1.76. Participants completed self-report questionnaires measuring three constructs: the quality of civic communication they experienced with their parents, the relative priority they placed on intrinsic versus extrinsic life goals, and their sense of environmental responsibility toward the sea. The sample spans early and middle adolescence, a developmental window in which identity, values, and long-term aspirations are actively under construction, and in which parental influence competes with peers, schools, and digital media for a young person’s attention.

Analytically, the study employed structural equation modeling, a statistical framework that allows researchers to test whether a network of hypothesized relationships among variables fits the observed data. Rather than examining each pair of variables in isolation, structural equation modeling evaluates an entire theoretical pathway simultaneously, here the proposed chain running from family communication through life goal orientation to marine environmental responsibility. This approach also makes it possible to estimate indirect effects, situations in which one variable influences another only by way of an intermediate variable, which was central to the team’s hypothesis about intrinsic goals serving as a motivational bridge.

The results supported the core predictions. Parent-child civic communication was positively associated with intrinsic life goals, meaning that adolescents who reported richer civic conversations with their parents also tended to prioritize growth, community contribution, and relational aims. Notably, no significant association emerged between civic communication and extrinsic goals, suggesting that family dialogue about civic matters specifically nourishes intrinsic aspirations rather than shifting motivation across the board. In turn, intrinsic life goals were positively associated with marine environmental responsibility, while extrinsic goals showed no significant relationship with that outcome. Money, image, and status, in other words, did not predict a sense of obligation toward the ocean; self-transcending and growth-oriented aims did.

Perhaps the most consequential finding was the indirect pathway. The modeling revealed an indirect association between parent-child civic communication and marine environmental responsibility operating through intrinsic life goals. In practical terms, this means that family conversations about civic life appear to matter for ocean stewardship not because parents lecture their children about plastic pollution or overfishing, but because such conversations seem to cultivate a broader motivational posture, one oriented toward contribution and connectedness, from which environmental responsibility toward the sea follows as a natural expression. The sea, in this framework, is not the explicit subject of the formative dialogue; it is the beneficiary of the values that dialogue instills.

The authors frame these findings as a contribution to understanding the psychological and relational processes associated with adolescents’ engagement in environmental sustainability and marine conservation. That framing matters because marine ecosystems face mounting pressure from pollution, warming, and overexploitation, and because behavior change campaigns aimed at young people often assume that information alone drives action. This study points instead to a motivational and relational architecture: if the goal is to raise adolescents who feel responsible for the ocean, interventions may be more effective when they strengthen the quality of civic dialogue within families and nurture intrinsic aspirations, rather than relying solely on delivering facts about marine degradation. Schools, environmental organizations, and public agencies could, in principle, design programs that equip parents with the tools and prompts for these conversations, treating the family as an underused site of environmental education.

The study also carries methodological and interpretive caveats worth noting. The data are cross-sectional and self-reported, drawn from a single set of questionnaires completed at one point in time, so the modeled pathways represent associations consistent with the proposed theory rather than demonstrated causal effects. It remains possible, for example, that adolescents who already feel responsible toward the sea elicit more civic conversation from their parents, or that unmeasured factors, such as direct experiences with coastal environments, shape both dialogue and responsibility. The sample of 277 Italian adolescents, while adequate for the modeling approach used, also leaves open questions about how these dynamics operate in other cultural contexts, where family communication norms and the cultural salience of the sea may differ considerably.

Even with those limits, the research adds a distinctive piece to a growing picture of environmental development in adolescence. It suggests that the seeds of ocean stewardship are planted in ordinary family life, watered by conversations about what it means to be a citizen, and expressed through the intrinsic goals young people come to hold for themselves. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Center for Psychological Research and Intervention at the University of Messina, conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and the ethical guidelines of the Italian Association of Psychology, and carried out with informed consent from all participants and their parents or legal guardians. As marine conservation increasingly looks to the next generation, the message of this work is quietly radical: the path to a more responsible relationship with the sea may begin not on the shoreline but at home, one civic conversation at a time.

Subject of Research: The role of parent-child civic communication and intrinsic versus extrinsic life goals in adolescents' environmental responsibility toward the sea

Article Title: Adolescents’ environmental responsibility toward the sea: the role of parent-child civic communication and life goals

Article References: Papa, F., Cuzzocrea, F., Larcan, R., & Liga, F. (2026). Adolescents’ environmental responsibility toward the sea: the role of parent-child civic communication and life goals. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08945-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-08945-8

Keywords: adolescence, environmental responsibility, marine conservation, parent-child communication, civic engagement, intrinsic goals, extrinsic goals, life goals, structural equation modeling, self-determination theory, family communication, environmental psychology