Talking in the present, caring for the future: Language and environment

Abstract

This paper identifies a new source that explains environmental behaviour: the presence of future tense marking in language. We predict that languages that grammatically mark the future affect speakers' intertemporal preferences and thereby reduce their willingness to address environmental problems. We first show that speakers of languages with future tense marking are less likely to adopt environmentally responsible behaviours and to support policies to prevent environmental damage. We then document that this effect holds across countries: future tense marking is an important determinant of climate change policies and global environmental cooperation. The results suggest that there may be deep and surprising obstacles for attempts to address climate change.

Not when but if: Modality and future time reference in English, Dutch and German

“…Chen, Cronqvist, Ni, & Zhang, 2017;Chi, Su, Tang, & Xu, 2018;Fasan, Gotti, Kang, & Liu, 2016;Figlio, Giuliano, Özek, & Sapienza, 2016;Galor, Özak, & Sarid, 2016;Guin, 2017;Hübner & Vannoorenberghe, 2015a;Karapandza, 2016;Kim, Kim, & Zhou, 2017;Liang, Marquis, Renneboog, & Sun, 2018;?, ? ;Mavisakalyan, Tarverdi, & Weber, 2018;Pérez & Tavits, 2017;Roberts, Winters, & Chen, 2015;Sutter, Angerer, Glätzle-rützler, & Lergetporer, 2015;Thoma & Tytus, 2018). The suggestion is that speakers of languages with strict future tenses might be less future-orientated because increased grammatical marking of FTR would cause them to discount value as a function of time to a greater degree than do speakers of languages which do not mark FTR (K. Chen, 2013).…”

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Psychological Impact of Different Grammaticalizations of the Future

“…Further, the LSH was confirmed by research concerning pro-environmental attitudes (Kim & Filimonau, 2017), environmental behavior and policies (Mavisakalyan et al, 2018) as well as future-oriented policies in general (Pérez & Tavits, 2017). Mavisakalyan et al, (2018), for example, followed Chen's (2003) setup, using panel data from the World Values Survey, finding speakers of weak FTR languages to be more willing to engage in costly pro-environmental actions, which was also evident across all countries (e.g., more climate change policies). Kim and Filimonau (2017) assessed pro-environmental attitudes between Mandarin (weak FTR) and Korean (strong FTR) speakers using an online questionnaire.…”

“…Usually, languages with higher degrees of FTR additionally use particular constructions with lower degrees of FTR, as seen in the French inflectional and periphrastic constructions, to express a range of probability regarding future events (Bybee et al, 1991). There are no clear criteria to identify languages with a high degree of FTR: some studies categorize periphrastic future constructions as a high degree of FTR (e.g., Dahl & Velupillai, 2013;Galor et al, 2018), whereas other studies use the general marking of the verb tense to characterize a high degree of FTR (e.g., Chen, 2013;Kim & Filimonau, 2017;Mavisakalyan et al, 2018). Future research may consider grammaticalization of the future as a continuum (e.g., Thoma & Tytus, 2018) and adapt the categorization of the degree of FTR to suit a specific research question.…”

Are loans cheaper when tomorrow seems further?

“…Recent works have provided support for the influence of the future tense on economic behavior. Mavisakalyan, Tarverdi, and Weber (2018) show that speakers of weak-FTR languages are more willing to address environmental problems than speakers of strong-FTR languages. Chen et al (2017) observe that weak-FTR language firms have higher precautionary cash holdings.…”

“…This finding then supports the hypothesis that the dissociation between the present and the future contributes to reducing how much economic agents care about the future. In another cross-country analysis with data on individuals, Mavisakalyan, Tarverdi, and Weber (2018) question whether speakers of strong-FTR languages would be more reluctant to address environmental problems. This assumption is again in accordance with the perspective that the language affects intertemporal preferences.…”