Global citizenship identity mediates the relationship of knowledge, cognitive, and socio-emotional skills with engagement towards global issues

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a unified framework to address interconnected global issues, emphasizing the need for collective action across all sectors of society to achieve a sustainable future for all. In this paper, we empirically investigate how knowledge (awareness of global issues), cognitive skills (critical inquiry), and socio-emotional skills (cognitive empathy) relate to engagement towards global issues, and whether global citizenship identification mediates these relationships. Mediation analysis of data from 249 participants revealed that both awareness of global issues and cognitive empathy directly predict higher engagement levels. In contrast, no direct effect of critical inquiry was observed. Global citizenship identification significantly mediated the relationships between all three predictors and engagement: accounting for 70.7% of the effect of critical inquiry, 39.9% of the effect of awareness, and 33.6% of the effect of cognitive empathy. Our findings highlight that global citizenship identification plays a crucial role in translating knowledge and skills into active engagement. The results highlight the potential effectiveness of identity-based interventions in fostering more engaged communities and advancing efforts toward achieving the SDGs.