Protecting the environment is a social dilemma: environmental protection benefits everyone but is individually costly. We propose that protecting the environment is similar to other types of cooperation, in that environmentalism functions as a signal of one's willingness to cooperate with others. We test several novel predictions from this hypothesis. We used a mathematical model to show that environmentalism

Self-regulation in early childhood is linked with later academic success and general well-being. Therefore, there is great interest in supporting its development. Exposure to nature has been linked with many positive outcomes, including enhanced attentional functioning, which may be an underlying resource in self-regulation. Employing a quasi-experimental design, we examined the relationship between

Almost all the studies about place attachment in environmental risk contexts only consider the role of place attachment to home or local area. However, especially when it comes to risks requiring evacuation from home and local area, it is likely that place attachment to evacuation sites, if any, becomes relevant too. The present studies intend to understand how place attachment to evacuation sites

Geographical personality differences robustly predict diverse consequential outcomes. However, comparatively little is known about the factors that create such differences, in particular the role of the built environment. To bridge the gap, the present study used a socioecological approach to examine the relationship between walkability and personality. Walkability reflects the degree to which urban

Environmental degradation and biodiversity loss are worldwide problems caused by human activities, which can often be classified as a resource dilemma. Across two studies, and using self-determination theory as a framework, we examine the relationships between motivation, goals, sanctioning systems and sustainable behaviour in a resource dilemma. The resource dilemma used was a 2-person partnered design

Psychological research suggests a sense of purpose in life is a coveted asset, with well-established linkages to well-being and healthy functioning. But how do individuals preserve this sense when previously reliable settings - and the opportunities they afford - are profoundly disrupted? The current moment provides a formidable test of this question, as widespread transmission of Covid-19 and intense

There is increasing attention to the negative emotional responses associated with awareness of climate change. We present three studies developing a scale of climate change anxiety. In Study 1, the scale was developed and validated in an MTurk sample of 197. Exploratory factor analysis of our item pool revealed a four-factor structure, with cognitive-emotional impairment, functional impairment, behavioral

In a time of rapid climate change, understanding what may encourage sustainable consumer behaviour is a vital but difficult challenge. Using an attitude network approach, we investigated which associations people have towards conventional and bio-based plastic in order to develop an empirically-based approach to initiate attitude- and behaviour change. With a qualitative study (N = 97), we distilled

Children's everyday experiences with physical activity in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions are important from a health promotion standpoint. Experiencing well-being in physically active play is important, and the affordances of the environment may support such behaviour. The aim of this study is to develop knowledge about how the affordances of the ECEC outdoor environment may

Rural communities often display strong emotions in response to closures of facilities and services. Research into explaining community responses hardly pays attention to the socio-psychological process of ‘loss’ of such local facilities, which occurs when place bonds are disrupted. This paper explores how a rural community makes sense of place-change by examining how residents interpret, evaluate and

Sophisticated electric lighting solutions like tuneable white-light LED-systems, varying in light amount and/or colour temperature, can help to supplement or mimic daylight. Today's office environments are increasingly being equipped with dynamic lighting solutions even though it is yet unknown what a dynamic pattern looks like to optimally support human performance and well-being. In a pilot study

As cancer remains the leading disease-related cause of death in adolescence, designers must consider the influence of health facility design on social support and quality of life, while considering the changing psychosocial needs of adolescents and young adults (AYAs). Both the stress of treatment and the environment in which treatment occurs can influence AYAs during a time of significant social,

Emerging adulthood is considered an important period in identity formation (Arnett, 2000). In this study, we consider how political ideological development during emerging adulthood may influence environmental beliefs, identity and actions in adulthood. To explore these relationships, we used longitudinal data initially collected in 1999 from over 300 Canadian adolescents (age 19) who were monitored

The 1.5° target outlined in the Paris agreement requires immediate and fundamental climate action; the lack of climate knowledge, prevalent misconceptions and purported knowledge may be major barriers. Therefore, this study was carried out to analyze signs of judgmental overconfidence in lay climate knowledge using a quota sample of 499 Austrians. Results indicate that several misconceptions exist

Climate change is one of the greatest threats to humanity and requires immediate action. Schuldt, Konrath, and Schwarz (2011) suggested that beliefs in environmental phenomena can be influenced by the terminology used to describe it: changing question wording from global warming to climate change resulted in a 6.3 percentage point increase in belief in environmental phenomena. This association was

Clothing production has high impacts on the environment, with a reduction in the consumption of clothes providing a contribution towards urgently needed sustainable production and consumption. The present study employs the comprehensive action determination model (CADM) to identify psychological determinants associated with reduced clothing consumption across five different countries. In two studies

Research has suggested that values favoring the interest of the collective over that of the individual promote pro-environmental behaviors. However, it is also well-documented that people do not always act according to their values; the strength of the association between values and behaviors depends on sociocultural contexts. The present investigation examines under what sociocultural contexts the

The present research investigated whether age-related differences in connectedness with nature in adolescence are associated with pro-environmental behavior across two cultures, Canada (N = 325) and China (N = 363). While older adolescents demonstrated lower connectedness with nature in both countries, pro-environmental behavior was inversely associated with age only in Canada but not in China. To

This paper focuses on intergenerational transmission of environmental behavior, i.e., the processes by which environmental behavior is negotiated and shaped within the family. We offer an analysis of two correlates of child environmental behavior: parental environmental behaviors (as intergenerational transmission) and socialization domains (parent-child interactions). Our interest lies in exploring

When explaining engagement in environmental activism, previous psychological studies have mostly focused on motivational factors. In this investigation, considering that environmental activism is political in essence, I argue that the effect of motivations is moderated by the political context people face. Drawing upon political science theories, I hypothesize that psychological motivations (environmental

Successful climate change mitigation and adaptation depend on the public's trust in experts. Gaining a deeper understanding of how trust in certain actors influences individuals' mitigation and adaptation behaviours is, therefore, key. We present results of a meta-analysis that examines the role of trust in institutions, scientists, industry, environmental groups and people in general, in relation

Behavioral spillover is the phenomenon when a behavior change is accompanied by subsequent changes in other behaviors related to the same goal (e.g., environmental protection). We propose to understand behavioral spillover as the result of attitude change. According to the Campbell Paradigm (see Kaiser, Byrka, & Hartig, 2010), pro-environmental behaviors are an expression of a person's environmental

Ecologically-friendly lifestyles such as Minimalism—living with less—are gaining attention in popular media outlets. However, it is unclear whether ecological concern is driving the popularity of these lifestyles, and how social marketing campaigns could leverage this consumer shift. This research examines whether living with less is equally encouraged by biospheric and egoistic appeals, e.g., reducing

Contact with, and psychological connectedness to the natural world are both associated with various health and sustainability-related outcomes. To date, though, the evidence base has been fragmented. Using a representative sample of the adult population of England (N = 4,960), we investigated the relationships between three types of nature contact, psychological connectedness, health, subjective wellbeing

The dark figures of crime are occurrences that, by some criteria, are called crime yet that are not registered in the official statistics. According to several studies, only a few rapes are reported to the authorities. The current study, using crime data from Campinas, Brazil, sought to examine the spatial dark figures of rapes through the comparison between the spatial patterns of incidents from an

Divisions between political Liberals and Conservatives on environmental issues seem to be widening, with Liberals generally more pro-environmental than Conservatives. We propose that common framing of environmental messages tends to perpetuate these gaps. We designed two experiments to examine this assumption and explore the prospects of narrowing these divisions using communication based on moral

With the development of mobile robots, research on interpersonal distances grew by a new body of research introducing new opportunities to environmental psychology. In this review, an overview of the literature on interpersonal distances focusing on human-robot interaction is given. Findings on the most prominent factors are summarized and discussed with respect to findings from distancing in human-human

This study compares the predictive power of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation behaviors in agricultural rice production. Data were collected from 1538 rice farmers in the province of Hubei, China. We empirically examine the determinants of rice growers' intentions towards mitigation and adaption and

Evidence has revealed that exposure to a restorative environment can have health and cognitive benefits, but the mechanism remains unclear. This study was designed to explore the neural mechanism of environmental restorative experiences. We conducted an experiment by randomly exposing thirty-two participants to either 20 min of a restorative (wooded garden) or a nonrestorative (traffic island) environment

Turn-by-turn instructions of navigation systems do not fully correspond to the way in which people typically communicate spatial information to each other. Previous research demonstrated that the acquisition of survey knowledge from such instructions is challenging. In the present study we investigate whether it is possible to create wayfinding instructions that communicate survey information, without

As the actions of individuals contribute substantially to climate change, identifying factors that underpin environmentally-relevant behaviors represents an important step towards modifying behavior and mitigating climate change impacts. This paper introduces a sequential model in which antecedent psychological and socio-demographic variables predict climate change risk perceptions, which lead to enhanced

We analyzed the relations between exposure to news describing a natural disaster and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) with 241 Italian adults, surveyed twice, before and after a severe earthquake. Our results were compatible with the idea that the exposure to earthquake news led to an increase in RWA among people who had low, but not among who had relatively high, authoritarian levels before the event

Monetary rewards are effective for promoting environmental protection. But can protecting the environment for financial reasons result in durable increases in people's inherent motivation to protect the environment—that is, their environmental attitude? With this research, we aimed to experimentally test the long-term efficacy of financial incentive/reward interventions. We randomly assigned a sample

Racial/ethnic minorities and lower-socioeconomic (SES) groups in the U.S. face disproportionate environmental risks, which may hold implications for how these groups construe environmental issues, relative to other segments of the public. We explored this possibility with a diverse sample of 1191 U.S. adults, hypothesizing that, relative to White and higher-SES respondents, non-White and lower-SES

Past research offered evidence that cosmopolitan individuals behave more pro-environmentally. The current study systematically examined two mechanisms explaining why. One the one hand, cosmopolitan individuals acquire knowledge about global challenges concerning environmental crises and become aware of mitigating strategies. On the other hand, cosmopolitan individuals extend their prosociality beyond

Humans tend to encode the environment by means of two types of spatial relations: coordinate (metric) and categorical (nonmetric). The present research contributes to methods for disentangling the contribution of categorical and coordinates spatial relations in sketch maps and investigates the role of familiarity with spatial information in accurate encoding of these spatial relations. The results

Prior studies of oil spills have reported adverse impacts on mental health, but have not examined some potentially important moderators. In this cross-sectional analysis of n=38,361 responses to the 2010-2011 Gulf States Population Survey, we assessed the association of direct oil contact with depression severity following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and modification by self-mastery, emotional

Research indicates that people are drawn to green spaces with attractive amenities. This study extends that finding by comparing walking patterns in two neighborhoods with different numbers of parks; parks did not differ in rated attractiveness nor did neighborhoods differ substantially in rated walkability. Adults, aged 32-86 years (n = 90), drew their 3 most recent walking routes on maps of their

Understanding who takes advantage of new transit (public transportation) interventions is important for personal and environmental health. We examine transit ridership for residents living near a new light rail construction as part of "complete street," pedestrian-friendly improvements. Adult residents (n=536) completed surveys and wore accelerometer and GPS units that tracked ridership before and

Fractal geometry has been used to describe natural and built environments, but has yet to be studied in navigational research. In order to establish a relationship between the fractal dimension (D) of a natural environment and humans' ability to navigate such spaces, we conducted two experiments using virtual environments that simulate the fractal properties of nature. In Experiment 1, participants

While there are a growing number of observational instruments to assess the built and social dimensions of the neighborhood environment, there are few reliable and validated instruments; there are no instruments that assess the neighborhood environment during nighttime hours, a potential peak period of health and safety risk. The purpose of this investigation is to establish the metric properties of

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a latent variable model that explores the ways in which social structural factors influence the amount of social support that older adults provide to their social network members. Neighborhood conditions play a key role in this conceptual scheme. The findings provide support for the following conceptual linkages: (1) low parental education is associated

The detrimental effects of a ringing phone on cognitive performance were investigated in four experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, the effects of different types of sounds (a standard cell phone ring, irrelevant tones and an instrumental song commonly encountered by participants) on performance were examined. In Experiment 1, slower responses were observed in all auditory groups relative to a silence

Becoming proficient at navigation in urban environments is something that we all aspire to. Here we asked whether being an expert at wayfinding in one environment has any effect on learning new spatial layouts. Licensed London taxi drivers are among the most proficient urban navigators, training for many years to find their way around a complex and irregularly-laid out city. We first tested how well

Studies relating urban design to health have been impeded by the unfeasibility of conducting field observations across large areas and the lack of validated objective measures of urban design. This study describes measures for five dimensions of urban design - imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity - created using public geographic information systems (GIS) data from the

Much of our day-to-day wayfinding behaviour takes place in familiar large-scale urban environments, yet there is a dearth of studies examining how wayfinding unfolds on a second-by-second basis in this context. Here we used a retrospective verbal report protocol, eye tracking and a highly accurate virtual reality simulation of a real city (London, UK) to examine this issue. Subjects, who were taxi

This study examines the effects of perceived housing environment on selected well-being outcomes of a seriously mentally ill population in supported housing programs. Individuals live independently in their own apartments and use supportive mental health services as needed. The study conceptualizes one's housing environment as existing at the apartment, neighborhood and the surrounding community levels

Extreme environmental situations are useful tools for the investigation of the general processes of adaptation. Among such situations, high altitude of more than 3000 m produces a set of pathological disorders that includes both cerebral (cAS) and respiratory (RAS) altitude symptoms. High altitude exposure further induces anxiety responses and behavioural disturbances. The authors report an investigation

The psychological effects of unusual environments reveal different aspects of behaviour from those seen in more customary situations. Such environments provide natural laboratories in which many questions of psychological interest, varying with the specific environment, may be studied. This paper uses isolated polar stations to illustrate this point. In such settings, the usual parameters that control

In China, the current situation is that people under indirect threat from unprotected lead-zinc mining tends to oppose it, whereas people under direct threat are likely to 'sail close to the wind'. To understand this puzzle-like phenomenon, we surveyed 220 residents in a lead-zinc mining area located in Fenghuang County of China. We found that: 1) The degree of risk perception of villagers living around