Why Acting Environmentally-Friendly Feels Good: Exploring the Role of Self-Image

The impact of information intervention on urban residents' willingness to sort domestic waste

Although many studies have assessed the effectiveness of waste sorting policies, few studies have explored residents' waste sorting behavior from the perspective of information intervention as a nudge. This study conducts an online survey to empirically examine the effects of information intervention on residents' willingness to sort domestic waste in urban China. We design and implement three types of randomized information interventions (positive, negative, and neutral) to 720 residents in the city of Beijing. Results from ordered probit models show that, despite the large amount of intervention-related policy context that the sampled subjects already possess before the intervention, information intervention can still effectively improve urban residents' willingness to sort domestic waste, and that the information framing effect exists. Specifically, while neutral information intervention does not affect urban residents' willingness to sort domestic waste, both positive and negative information interventions improve residents' willingness to sort domestic waste, and positive information intervention has a stronger effect. These effects are heterogeneous depending on gender, age, and income of residents, with the effect in male, young-age, and low-income groups stronger than that of female, old-age, and high-income groups respectively.

Factors affecting compliance with vehicular environmental laws and pro-environmental behavior in Lahore, Pakistan

Lahore, Pakistan, is considered the most polluted city in the world and is suffering from environmental injustice due to a lack of compliance with vehicular environmental laws and deficient observance of pro-environmental behavior. This study analyzes factors affecting public compliance with vehicular environmental laws among drivers in Lahore with an extended pro-environmental behavior approach. The study utilized several factors such as personal benefits prioritization (PBP), economic incentives perception (EIP), government system (IGS), perceived eco-policy effectiveness and enforcement (PEPEE), environmental knowledge and awareness (EKA), theory of planned behavior (TPB), and value belief norm theory (VBNT). Using purposive sampling in the data collection, two hundred fifty-one participants voluntarily answered the survey through a self-administered online questionnaire utilizing the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results showed that personal benefits prioritization (PBP) significantly affected economic incentive perception (EIP). EIP and perceived eco-policy effectiveness and enforcement (PEPEE) showed a significant direct relationship with environmental knowledge and awareness (EKA). Interestingly, the government system (IGS) has the highest direct significance with PEPEE. EKA significantly affected the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the value belief norm theory (VBNT). Thus, this study can be a foundation for related sectors to enhance the air quality of Lahore, Pakistan, by enhancing vehicular environmental laws and ensuring compliance. Increasing awareness through improving education and enforcement strategies is expected to contribute to successful compliance among Lahore residents, eventually aligning with national ecological sustainability policies. Moreover, the paper provides a comprehensive roadmap for stakeholders to address the environmental challenges identified and contribute to a more sustainable and environmentally just future globally.

Driving factors of residential demand response for the integration of variable renewable power

The large-scale integration of renewable power poses great challenges to grid stability. Among flexible resources, demand response (DR) stands out for its advantages in cost and efficiency. To identify key factors influencing DR, this study adopted the modified theory of planned behavior (TPB) to establish the conceptual model. Social norms were included as a front-end variable, and institutional factors and electricity consumption habits served as moderating variables. The model was subsequently tested and modified using the structural equation modelling (SEM). Results indicated that social norms can exert a substantial indirect effect on DR behavior. However, due to the deficiency of such norms, the formation of the positive attitude towards DR was hindered, resulting in a low standard coefficient of 0.16. Moreover, the influence of subjective norm on response intention was rejected due to limited perceived external pressure. Perceived behavior control exhibited the most significant direct influence on response intention (0.76). Additionally, the positive effects of situational factors and personal habits on the conversion from response intention to behavior were supported. Based on these findings, several policy suggestions including enhancing publicity and incentive policies were proposed.

Proenvironmental Behavior Increases Subjective Well-Being: Evidence From an Experience-Sampling Study and a Randomized Experiment

Two preregistered studies investigated whether engaging in proenvironmental behavior increases a person's well-being. A 10-day experience-sampling study (7,161 observations from 181 adults in 14 countries, primarily the United States) revealed positive within-person and between-person associations, and a randomized controlled experiment (N = 545 U.S. undergraduates) found that incorporating proenvironmental behavior into individuals' daily activities increased their experiences of happiness and meaning in life. Indeed, the effect was comparable to incorporating activities selected specifically to elicit such positive states, though these results may be affected by demand characteristics. The studies also offered some tentative preliminary evidence about why such an effect might emerge. There was some support for the hypothesis that proenvironmental behavior affects well-being by creating a "warm glow." But overall the findings align more closely with the hypothesis that proenvironmental behavior helps to satisfy individuals' basic psychological needs.

Emotional responses to climate change in Norway and Ireland: a validation of the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE) in two European countries and an inspection of its nomological span

There is an increasing research interest in emotional responses to climate change and their role in climate action and psycho-social impacts of climate change. At the same time, emotional experience of climate change is multidimensional and influenced by a variety of factors, including the local cultural context. Here, we contribute to the scientific debate about this topic with original quality-controlled data from the general populations in Norway (N = 491) and Ireland (N = 485). We investigate the cross-cultural validity and the nomological span of eight distinct emotional responses to climate change - climate anger, climate contempt, climate enthusiasm, climate powerlessness, climate guilt, climate isolation, climate anxiety, and climate sorrow - measured using the recently introduced Inventory of Climate Emotions. We first validate the 8-factor structure of the Norwegian and English language versions of the ICE. Subsequently, we demonstrate a high degree of cross-cultural measurement invariance for these eight climate emotions. Finally, we explore the relationships between these emotional responses and a range of theoretically relevant variables. In this final step, we show that climate emotions are differentially linked to climate change perceptions, support for mitigation policies, socio-demographic factors, feelings of loneliness and alienation, environmental activism, and the willingness to prioritize the natural environment over one's immediate self-interests. Some of these links are also differentiated by the cultural context. This research presents further evidence for the structural, cross-cultural, and concurrent validity of climate emotions as postulated in the ICE framework. Moreover, it provides tools in the form of validated Norwegian and English language versions of the ICE, the complete R code for the validation analysis, as well as an informed basis for cross-cultural research on emotional responses to climate change.

The role of green finance in mitigating climate change risks: a quantitative analysis of sustainable investments

The dire problem of climate change has garnered more attention in recent years and, with it, the necessity of reducing its damaging effects on the environment. Nevertheless, despite the green finance index's (GFI) potential advantages in combating climate change, empirical studies on the subject's consequences have been few, mostly because of the index's restricted data availability. This study's primary goal is to close this gap by employing panel data analysis to investigate the environmental effects of GFI in China between 2004 and 2021. Econometric methods like the Driscoll-Kraay standard error and other robustness test models are used to look into the links between political risk, green finance, the ecological footprint, and the economic complexity index. According to the research findings, there is a 0.31% and 0.81% decrease in ecological footprint resulting from the implementation of GFI and rises in GDP (gross domestic product). These results suggest that these strategies could play a major role in establishing a sustainable environment. However, in the chosen countries, the ecological footprint increases by 0.81% and 0.80%, respectively, due to the presence of political risk and economic complexity. This study suggests that government involvement is necessary to reduce carbon footprints and protect the ecosystem, based on these empirical findings. Implementing green financing initiatives, fostering technological development, economic diversification, and fostering a stable political environment are all ways to achieve sustainable investments.

Waste sorting behaviors promote subjective well-being: A perspective of the self-nature association

As one of the most important pro-environmental behaviors, individuals' waste sorting behaviors are positively associated with their subjective well-being. This relationship is usually explained by the "self-other association", regarding waste sorting behaviors as pro-social deeds, thus elevating people's positive self-perception and strengthening a sense of interpersonal relatedness. Distinct from the general "good deeds", the ultimate beneficiary of waste sorting behaviors is the natural environment instead of other people, so the mechanism underlying the positive relationship between performing a general good deed and subjective well-being might not suffice to explain the positive association between waste sorting behaviors and subjective well-being. The current study proposed the "self-nature association" with the cognitive (i.e., environmental perception) and the affective (i.e., nature connectedness) pathways. Using a large sample national survey in China (N = 4,705), we confirmed the positive link between waste sorting behaviors and subjective well-being, and the dual pathway was verified by a parallel mediation analysis. The theoretical and practical values of the present work were further explicated.

Psychology of Climate Change

Human behavior plays a critical role in causing global climate change as well as in responding to it. In this article, I review important insights on the psychology of climate change. I first discuss factors that affect the likelihood that individuals engage in a wide range of climate actions. Next, I review the processes through which values affect climate actions and reflect on how to motivate climate actions among people who do not strongly care about nature, the environment, and climate change. Then I explain that even people who may be motivated to engage in climate actions may not do so when they face major barriers to act. This implies that to promote wide-scale climate actions, broader system changes are needed. I discuss relevant factors that affect public support for system changes that facilitate and enable climate action. Finally, I summarize key lessons learned and identify important questions for future research.

Determinants of Employee Electricity Saving Behavior in Small Firms: The Role of Benefits and Leadership

The emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through electricity consumption by firms is one of the significant drivers of climate change. The performance of a firm’s environmental programme is to a large extent dependent on employee behaviour. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the study tested a theoretical model that incorporates benefits and leadership as antecedents of attitude towards electricity saving by the employees of small firms in the hospitality sector. The effects of five benefits (intrinsic, extrinsic, organisational, social, and environmental) and two leadership factors (leadership behaviour and leadership support) were examined. Investigating the antecedents of TPB constructs can help in understanding the process through which the constructs are associated with intention. In addition, the moderating effect of green psychological climate in the relationship between intention and electricity saving behaviour was examined. The study used the quantitative research design, and the cross-sectional survey method was used for data collection. The hypotheses of the study were tested using the Partial Least Square Structural Equation modelling (PLS SEM). The results of the empirical study indicated that intrinsic, organisational, social, and environmental benefits are positively related to attitudes towards electricity saving. In addition, the effects of leadership behaviour and support are significant. Furthermore, green psychological climate moderates the relationship between intention and electricity saving behaviour. Recommendations to improve employees’ electricity saving behaviour are suggested.

Estimating the non-pecuniary benefit of engaging in pro-environmental behaviors: Incorporating both heterogeneous preferences and income endogeneity

This article estimates the individuals' non-pecuniary benefit of engaging in pro- environmental behaviors (PEB) using a large sample from Ecuador. As a novelty, we estimate a model that allows incorporating both unobserved heterogeneity in preferences and controlling for the potential endogeneity of income through instrumental variables. Although both problems have been addressed separately in the literature, we show that considering both sources of bias allows finding more accurate and credible monetary values. Our results show that subjective monetary evaluations regarding PEBs are generally overestimated (the income coefficient is underestimated), but not including unobserved heterogeneity hides important patterns for an important group of the sample with completely different preferences.

Interindividual differences in environmentally relevant positive trait affect impacts sustainable behavior in everyday life

Emotions are powerful drivers of human behavior that may make people aware of the urgency to act to mitigate climate change and provide a motivational basis to engage in sustainable action. However, attempts to leverage emotions via climate communications have yielded unsatisfactory results, with many interventions failing to produce the desired behaviors. It is important to understand the underlying affective mechanisms when designing communications, rather than treating emotions as simple behavioral levers that directly impact behavior. Across two field experiments, we show that individual predispositions to experience positive emotions in an environmental context (trait affect) predict pro-environmental actions and corresponding shifts in affective states (towards personal as well as witnessed pro-environmental actions). Moreover, trait affect predicts the individual behavioral impact of positively valenced emotion-based intervention strategies from environmental messages. These findings have important implications for the targeted design of affect-based interventions aiming to promote sustainable behavior and may be of interest within other domains that utilize similar intervention strategies (e.g., within the health domain).

Health Behavior and Planetary Health

Abstract. Health and environmental psychology have long been walking side by side. These two disciplines of psychology have imported and applied common psychological frameworks and each of them developed specific theories and methodologies. At a time when humankind faces tremendous challenges ahead (climate change, global warming, ocean sickness, the reemergence of infections pandemics), environmental health is more and more a crucial domain of research. Both environmental psychology and health psychology need to be engaged in environmental health issues in order to enhance planetary health. Environmental psychology traditional fields of research provide understanding about how natural or constructed environments impact human identity, attitudes, and behaviors (more recently, environmental psychology is also investing in determinants of pro-environmental behaviors). On the other hand, health psychology has an extensive comprehensive framework about how to promote healthy habits (i.e., automatically activated behaviors). We live in a global and extremely complex and interconnected world, which promotes syndemic phenomena (several interactive epidemics sharing common etiological factors), also resulting in accelerated depletion of natural resources. This current scenario might justify the development of an Environmental Health Psychology discipline, joining together tools from both environmental psychology and health psychology in a synergic and strategic way.

Moving Beyond Disciplinary Silos Towards a Transdisciplinary Model of Wellbeing: An Invited Review

The construct of wellbeing has been criticised as a neoliberal construction of western individualism that ignores wider systemic issues such as inequality and anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, there have been increasing calls for a broader conceptualisation of wellbeing. Here we impose an interpretative framework on previously published literature and theory, and present a theoretical framework that brings into focus the multifaceted determinants of wellbeing and their interactions across multiple domains and levels of scale. We define wellbeing as positive psychological experience, promoted by connections to self, community and environment, supported by healthy vagal function, all of which are impacted by socio-contextual factors that lie beyond the control of the individual. By emphasising the factors within and beyond the control of the individual and highlighting how vagal function both affects and are impacted by key domains, the biopsychosocial underpinnings of wellbeing are explicitly linked to a broader context that is consistent with, yet complementary to, multi-levelled ecological systems theory. Reflecting on the reciprocal relationships between multiple domains, levels of scale and related social contextual factors known to impact on wellbeing, our GENIAL framework may provide a foundation for a transdisciplinary science of wellbeing that has the potential to promote the wellbeing of individuals while also playing a key role in tackling major societal challenges.

Norm-focused nudges influence pro-environmental choices and moderate post-choice emotional responses

In this paper, we use choice architecture techniques to activate both social and personal norms, seeking to increase pro-environmental choices and to better understand the effect of such norm types on post-choice emotional responses. In four experiments, we make different social or personal norms salient by aligning choice environments with psychosocial mechanisms that activate different types of norms. We use different choice architecture techniques to change information, alter product sets, and generate the social consequences of choices. The target behavior, purchasing a recycled paper notebook, is captured through direct purchase behaviors or willingness to pay commitments. We find that choice architecture activates personal but not social norms, and that associated positive and negative emotions (guilt, shame, regret and pride) are elicited by choices but not by willingness to pay. Moreover, manipulating choice environment moderates the relationship between choice and norm-related emotions, such that positive emotional responses seem to be stronger than negative ones. The results suggest that choice architecture interventions can activate individual level beliefs about sustainability and help reduce the attitude-behavior gap.

I cannot live without air conditioning! The role of identity, values and situational factors on cooling consumption patterns in India

As the world continues to deal with climate-induced heat events, sustainable energy behaviours, or lifestyles combined with non-behavioural interventions have been identified as crucial pathways to curb the demand for air conditioners. Typically, ecological communities serve as a reference point for sustainable lifestyles as they have strong environmental self-identity and values and are more likely to further engage in pro-environmental and energy-saving actions. Yet, it is unknown if individuals within these communities will act as expected, especially when confronted with extreme climatic challenges like heatwaves. It is also unclear which factors will define individual responses to these challenges. Utilising environmental self-identity and Value-Belief-Norm theories, this paper examines factors underlying cooling consumption behaviours of households living in a Universal Community with strong environmental world views in India. Twenty in-depth qualitative interviews with residents, thematically analysed, found that while people expressed strong environmental self-identity, preferences for air conditioner use was often mediated by hedonic factors such as comfort and sleep. Moral norms played a positive role in how people operated their air conditioners. Yet, when faced with the choice of using energy-efficient air conditioners, biospheric concern was of limited importance while situational factors like cost and functionality were more pivotal. The above results raise interesting questions around the difficulties that might emerge in changing preferences around air conditioning behaviours in non-environmental communities, especially, if environmentally conscious communities which are expected to be "the locus of change for energy efficiency actions" are significantly influenced by hedonic values.

Current approaches to modeling the virtual reality in rodents for the assessment of brain plasticity and behavior

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have become valuable tools to study brains and behaviors resulting in development of new methods of diagnostics and treatment. Neurodegenerаtion is one of the best examples demonstrating efficacy of VR/АR technologies in modern neurology. Development of novel VR systems for rodents and combination of VR tools with up-to-date imaging techniques (i.e. MRI, imaging of neural networks etc.), brain electrophysiology (EEG, patch-clamp), precise analytics (microdialysis) allowed implementing of VR protocols into the animal neurobiology to study brain plasticity, sensorimotor integration, spatial navigation, memory, and decision-making. VR/AR for rodents is а young field of experimental neuroscience and has already provided more consistent testing conditions, less human-animal interaction, opportunities to use a wider variety of experimental parameters. Here we discuss present and future perspectives of using VR/AR to assess brain plasticity, neurogenesis and complex behavior in rodent and human study, and their advantages for translational neuroscience.

The Impact of Pro-environmental Preference on Consumers’ Perceived Well-being: The Mediating Role of Self-Determination Need Satisfaction

This study uses a conceptual research model to explore the mediating role of need satisfaction for competence, relatedness, and autonomy in the relationship between pro-environmental preference (PEP) and consumers’ perceived well-being (PWB). The data were collected on WJX (a Chinese online recruitment platform) from a sample of 514 respondents and analyzed using Smart PLS 3. The results indicated that two need satisfactions (competence and autonomy) fully mediate the relationship between PEP and consumers’ PWB. However, surprisingly, relatedness need satisfaction has no mediation effect in the relationship between PEP and consumers’ PWB. The results demonstrate the pivotal role of self-determination theory in explaining the primary psychological needs that must be met for consumers to perceive heightened states of well-being. Moreover, the results can signify to policymakers how to translate the impact of PEP into consumers’ PWB.

Assessing the Greenness of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems through Green IT Solutions: A Romanian Perspective

Businesses and technology play an important role in the global economy, where the achievement of sustainability goals has a positive impact on society and companies. In this regard, there is a need to integrate information technology and sustainability to enable companies to act in a greener manner. Knowing that the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is one of the most powerful business solutions for companies, it is crucial to align its use with sustainability elements through the use of green information technology (IT). We explored the relationship between ERP systems and green IT practices to assess how green IT provides an opportunity for organizations to improve ERP systems in more environmentally responsible initiatives. For that purpose, we empirically analyzed four Romanian economic sectors based on an online survey that contained criteria to explore organizational awareness about developing green ERP systems. The findings indicate that companies are generally focused on the key benefits of ERP systems related to operational aspects and less on the sustainability benefits. Based on these results, the main conclusion highlights the strong need to embed IT in business sustainability initiatives by adopting green IT solutions.

Contests versus Norms: Implications of Contest-Based and Norm-Based Intervention Techniques

Interventions using either contests or norms can promote environmental behavioral change. Yet research on the implications of contest-based and norm-based interventions is lacking. Based on Goal-framing theory, we suggest that a contest-based intervention frames a gain goal promoting intensive but instrumental behavioral engagement. In contrast, the norm-based intervention was expected to frame a normative goal activating normative obligations for targeted and non-targeted behavior and motivation to engage in pro-environmental behaviors in the future. In two studies participants (n = 347) were randomly assigned to either a contest- or a norm-based intervention technique. Participants in the contest showed more intensive engagement in both studies. Participants in the norm-based intervention tended to report higher intentions for future energy conservation (Study 1) and higher personal norms for non-targeted pro-environmental behaviors (Study 2). These findings suggest that contest-based intervention technique frames a gain goal, while norm-based intervention frames a normative goal.