“…v12i1.755 the one hand, the novelty of this project relies on the special emphasis on covering a diverse range of educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. Environmental awareness and behaviour of young adults have been widely explored, but less frequently going beyond climate activists (Kiilakoski & Piispa, 2023;Wahlstrom et al, 2019;Wallis & Loy, 2021) or the cohort of university students (Daskolia, 2022;Gago & Sá, 2021;Quijano et al, 2023), whose possibility of capturing the voice of young populations varies, specifically taking into account nation's varying rates of third-level education enrolment. On the other hand, and unlike most cross-national studies in environmental public opinion (Leiserowitz et al, 2022;Marquart Pyatt, 2018;Peisker, 2023), the qualitative approach of this research provides dense descriptions enabling the emergence of social representations of the environmental problem, as articulated by these young adults all the while embracing contradictions associated with the challenge of environmental risk engagement (Weintrobe, 2013).…”