Education for future? Investigating the role of education in explaining active green engagement – A multilevel moderated mediation analysis

Despite extensive literature emphasizing the role of education in promoting engagement in environmental movements, international comparative research has yet to fully elucidate the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Using data from 44,100 respondents across 28 countries in the ISSP's fourth environmental module, we demonstrate that individuals' willingness to pay for environmental protection (WTP) partially mediates the relationship between education and environmental public sphere behavior (PSB). Furthermore, drawing on the Quality of Government literature, we show that the link between education and WTP is significantly stronger in countries with low levels of corruption, a pattern that extends to the indirect relationship between education and PSB. Although the magnitude of this relationship is reduced, the direct positive association between education and PSB persists even in high-corruption contexts. These findings underscore the transnational importance of education in shaping environmentally significant attitudes and behaviors, as well as the crucial role of corruption in moderating how education translates into both WTP and PSB.