Explicit (but not implicit) environmentalist identity predicts pro-environmental behavior and policy preferences

By C. Brick, Calvin K. Lai. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2018

94 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Awareness of environmental problems has increased dramatically over recent decades, but individual action to address environmental issues has remained stagnant. Shifting social identities may be an under-appreciated explanation of this gap: identification with environmentalists in the U.S. dropped from 78% to 42% since 1991. In four pre-registered studies of U.S. residents (total N = 2,033), we explored the predictors and outcomes of environmentalist identity. We also developed a novel implicit measure of less deliberate aspects of environmentalist identity. We used explicit and implicit environmentalist identity to predict self-reported environmental behaviors and policy preferences. Meta-analysis of our pre-registered studies revealed that explicit identity was moderately associated with implicit identity (r = 0.24). Explicit identity strongly and uniquely predicted pro-environmental behaviors and policy preferences (partial rs = .58, .62), while implicit identity did not uniquely predict either (partial rs = .05, .05). Our findings highlight the importance of social identity in conservation.

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5aee1e93015c8e76e0c0218f96bfd70d855da0c9

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In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Cross-Cultural Validation of A Revised Environmental Identity Scale (2021, background): “A closely related concept is environmentalist identity, referring to affinity with socio-political movements that strive for the global well-being of eco-systems [7].”