Motivating proenvironmental behaviors depends on culture

What is it about?

People's active engagement and support for proenvironmental actions are required to address global environmental issues. We found that there are significant cultural differences in psychological antecedents of proenvironmental action. Personal concerns predicted proenvironmental action to a greater extent in more individualistic countries that place a greater value on expressing the internal self. People in more collectivistic countries were found to be motivated to act by a more social factor: their perception of prevalence of proenvironmental action among others.

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Why is it important?

Our findings suggest that changing personally-held beliefs, attitudes, and concerns about social issues, which is one of the most frequent strategies for behavioral change, are more likely to be effective in more individualistic cultural contexts in fostering people’s support to address the issues. More broadly, the key take home message is that according to cultural characteristics across nations, societies, and communities, the “psychological lever” to draw people’s support for action to meet given challenges can vary significantly. The cultural understanding of how culture shapes psychological antecedents of action to address social issues such as climate change should be incorporated in developing policies, campaigns, and interventions to address important social issues.