Why do people care but not act for the environment, and what can be done about it?

What is it about?

Most people say they care about nature, society, and others. However, people inconsistently act on these stated motivations, as reflected in their behaviors, policy support, and voting. Why? And can this be changed? An often heard answer is that people are insincere in reporting their motivations and are more egoistic than they state. Although this may be somewhat true, this interpretation is likely (far) too cynical. A major reason people do not engage in sustainable behaviors is that they are often still infeasible, unreasonably hard, or too uncommon. In many instances, the context must change so that people can and feel comfortable changing their behaviors. Policies can change the context, but widespread cynicism also discourages governments and businesses from suggesting and implementing those. This cynicism is further exacerbated by the notion that many concrete sustainable policies do face opposition. However, this opposition is often not driven by egoism but rather by social concerns, such as fairness, integrity, and doubts about policies' effectiveness, frequently fueled by—again—cynicism about implementers' motivations. In order to effectively address environmental issues such as climate change, it may therefore be wise to trust, and be less cynical, about people's caring about nature, society and others.

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Why is it important?

Environmental actions are lagging far behind. We tend to attribute this to people's limited interest in environmental and societal topics, regarding them as mostly egoistic. However, this cynicism about each other's motivations - rather than an actual lack of motivation - may be the root cause of why people do not act. Addressing this cynicism may be key opportunity to accelerate environmental action.