Connectedness with nature and the decline of pro-environmental behavior in adolescence: A comparison of Canada and China

By Tobias Krettenauer, Wan Wang, F. Jia, Ying Yao. 2020

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Abstract The present research investigated whether age-related differences in connectedness with nature in adolescence are associated with pro-environmental behavior across two cultures, Canada (N = 325) and China (N = 363). While older adolescents demonstrated lower connectedness with nature in both countries, pro-environmental behavior was inversely associated with age only in Canada but not in China. To investigate this cultural difference, we conducted a moderated mediation analysis. Positive self-evaluative emotion expectancies (pride/satisfaction) for engaging in pro-environmental behavior were found to mediate the interaction effect of culture and age when predicting pro-environmental behavior for Chinese but not for Canadian adolescents. The present research suggests that the development of pro-environmental behavior is contextually bounded and multi-directional. Effective promotion of pro-environmental behavior in adolescence should target culturally specific mechanisms, may it be connectedness with nature or moral emotions.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0bf631f4ef60cef49e0b767e93268ac596ac1c1c