Education and Sustainability-Related Orientations: Cross-National Evidence from the World Values Survey

As societies confront accelerating sustainability challenges, understanding the individual-level orientations that support collective action has become increasingly important. This study examines the association between educational attainment and three theoretically distinct sustainability-relevant value orientations using cross-national survey data. Drawing on the World Values Survey Wave 7, we analyze responses from 65,608 individuals across 65 countries using weighted least squares regression with country fixed effects to investigate how education relates to norm orientation, future orientation, and inclusion. The analysis reveals substantial variation in the strength of these associations across value dimensions. Education demonstrates a particularly strong relationship with future orientation, yielding a standardized effect size of 0.497, while showing considerably weaker associations with inclusion and norm orientation. Moderation analyses uncover important demographic contingencies, indicating that education gradients for norm orientation and inclusion weaken significantly with age, whereas the education-future orientation relationship remains stable across age groups. A modest gender difference emerges for future orientation, with slightly attenuated education effects among women. These findings suggest that education contributes to sustainability-relevant values primarily through cognitive pathways that enhance temporal perspective rather than through socialization into normative compliance or expansion of social tolerance. The results carry implications for education policy design and sustainable development initiatives.