Cultural Variability in the Link Between Environmental Concern and Support for Environmental Action

Abstract

Research on sustainability behaviors has been based on the assumption that increasing personal concerns about the environment will increase proenvironmental action. We tested whether this assumption is more applicable to individualistic cultures than to collectivistic cultures. In Study 1, we compared 47 countries ( N = 57,268) and found that they varied considerably in the degree to which environmental concern predicted support for proenvironmental action. National-level individualism explained the between-nation variability above and beyond the effects of other cultural values and independently of person-level individualism. In Study 2, we compared individualistic and collectivistic nations (United States vs. Japan; N = 251) and found culture-specific predictors of proenvironmental behavior. Environmental concern predicted environmentally friendly consumer choice among European Americans but not Japanese. For Japanese participants, perceived norms about environmental behavior predicted proenvironmental decision making. Facilitating sustainability across nations requires an understanding of how culture determines which psychological factors drive human action.

Interactions and Relationships between Personal Factors in Pro-Environmental Golf Tourist Behaviour: A Gender Analysis

“…As Eom, Kim, Sherman and Ishii [113] suggest, it is possible that concern for the environment is affected by cultural values. Several studies found that different factors in individualistic and collectivistic cultures are determinants of the formation of pro-environmental behaviour.…”

The Effects of Regional Characteristics and Policies on Individual Pro-Environmental Behavior in China

“…There are also many studies that analyze PEB at the national level using macro data [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]30,40]. As shown in the previous Table 1, while many different external factors have been identified by the extant studies, they could be grouped into four factors: economic status, environmental pollution, government policy, and civil society.…”

“…Recently, more and more studies on pro-environmental behavior (PEB) are examining multi-level factors influencing individual PEB, looking at not only personal factors such as environmental consciousness, interest, norms, intentions, and values but also external factors such as economic and environmental conditions, culture characteristics, government regulations, and environmental NGOs [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. They note that variations in external factors lead to differences in PEB across countries mainly using data for the Western world.…”

“Green” Information Promotes Employees’ Voluntary Green Behavior via Work Values and Perceived Accountability

“…The urgency of environmental issues has spurred a large volume of research on the psychological underpinning of support for pro-environmental actions in recent years, generating theories and empirical evidence regarding psychological factors related to pro-environmental engagement [30]. Yet the databases are heavily biased toward Western populations, which raises concerns about the generalizability of the findings [31], and this bias may be a critical barrier for addressing issues related to the global environmental crisis. The purpose of the current study is two-fold.…”