Environment and Behavior

Pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) are crucial to reducing environmental degradations, and much research has focused on two key psychological antecedents: pro-environmental attitudes and efficacy beliefs. Yet, the evidence of their direct and interactive relationships are mixed. Further, few studies investigate how these key relationships vary across different countries and contexts. Using data from a large international survey (N = 11,000) in 11 countries, we examine relationships among environmental attitudes, efficacy, and PEBs. Overall environmental attitudes are a strong predictor of PEBs, while efficacy has a small direct and a non-significant moderation effect. Within countries, both direct and moderation relationships involving efficacy are tiny. The relative dominance of environmental attitudes as a predictor raises questions about the unique importance of efficacy in explaining PEBs separate from attitudes (and covariates). The nuanced connections between these variables within individual countries highlight the importance of more diverse global environmental research.

In the present study, we adopted a global view for exploring how parent–adolescent dyads influence one another’s pro-environmental behaviors across 14 societies. We evaluated whether their own and the other’s familiarity with climate change are linked with their pro-environmental behaviors between parents and adolescents. We also explored the moderating role of societal power distance and individualism on these dyadic effects. We tested hypotheses using the data from the Program for International Student Assessment 2018 (including 62,080 parent–adolescent dyads from 14 societies). Conducting multilevel actor–partner interdependence models, we found that parents’ and adolescents’ familiarity with climate change generally predicted their own and the other’s pro-environmental behaviors within a family context in most societies. More importantly, the dyadic patterns were stronger in societies with lower levels of power distance or higher levels of individualism. Finally, we discuss the implications of promoting pro-environmental behaviors from a cultural perspective and a dyadic approach.

Prior research has demonstrated that communicating the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is happening is an effective way to increase public understanding and engagement with the issue. However, less is known about (1) how persuasive this message is to oppositional audiences, (2) how long message effects last over time, and (3) what factors predict whether such effects last. We address these questions in a two-wave longitudinal study and find that consensus messaging leads to updated consensus beliefs across Global Warming’s Six Americas. Although consensus treatment effects decay over time, 40% of the original treatment effect remains 26 days later. Additionally, the treatment effect is most durable among people Doubtful or Dismissive of climate change. Our findings address an ongoing debate in the literature and support a Bayesian learning perspective, with little evidence of motivated reasoning.