Affect and the adoption of pro-environmental behaviour: A structural model

By Filipe Coelho, Maria C. Pereira, L. Cruz, Paula Simões, E. Barata. 2017

168 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is an essential part of changing societies towards a more sustainable future. The literature on PEB has provided significant insights into how the anticipated emotions arising from specific ecological actions contribute to environmentally friendly conduct. Our research departs from these studies by focusing on general affect as a determinant of PEB. Moreover, we specify mechanisms for the transmission effects of trait (rather than state) affect into PEB. We use structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses, with a sample of 925 individuals. The results show that the influence of positive affect on (reported) PEB is partially mediated by environmental concern and perceived consumer effectiveness. As to negative affect, the findings suggest only a direct effect on PEB. We also found differences between males and females. These are novel results that help to illuminate the complex issue of what shapes PEB, thereby supporting relevant theoretical and practical implications.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/16dafc03fde6fc9503aad91156d58fa1e2d7cb55

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In Applied Psychology

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

In Marketing

Citations in the corpus

The Importance of Environmental Knowledge for Private and Public Sphere Pro-Environmental Behavior: Modifying the Value-Belief-Norm Theory (2019, methodology): “However, other studies found that even when people had a high level of environmental concern, they did not behave in a pro-environmental mode [44,52,103].”
Green apparel buying behaviour: A Stimulus–Organism–Behaviour–Consequence (SOBC) perspective on sustainability‐oriented consumption in Japan (2021, background): “…behaviour literature, which suggests that individuals' labelling satisfaction and desire and perceived effectiveness are associated with optimism (positive traits) and pessimism (negative traits) (Boileau et al., 2020; Coelho et al., 2017), we conceptualise the two as stimuli (S) in this study.”