Concern for the future and saving the earth: When does ecological resource scarcity promote pro-environmental behavior?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101501Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Exposure to ecological resource scarcity can't always promote individuals' pro-environmental behaviors.

  • The positive objective ecological resource scarcity-behavior link emerged only in countries with future-oriented culture.

  • The positive perceived ecological resource scarcity-behavior link emerged only for individuals with future-oriented traits.

  • Poster with water shortage information had a better publicity effect when future-oriented information was provided.

Abstract

With the continuous growth of the global population and the increasing demand for natural resources, ecological resource scarcity has become a global issue that cannot be ignored. However, little is known about individuals' environment-related responses to ecological resource scarcity. Will people save resources for the future or consume them for immediate interests when resources become scarce? Drawing on the life history theory and construal level theory, we propose that individuals' environment-related responses to ecological resource scarcity depend on levels of future orientation. Analyses of multilevel data from 30 countries found that only in highly future-oriented countries could objective ecological resource scarcity positively predict individuals’ daily pro-environmental behaviors (Study 1). Two subsequent studies at the individual level again established the moderating effect of future orientation on the link between perceived ecological resource scarcity and pro-environmental behaviors (Studies 2 & 3), and the causal effect was also clarified (Study 3). Specifically, only for future-oriented people, perceived ecological resource scarcity or reminders of it could positively promote pro-environmental behaviors. We further verified the moderation hypothesis with water-saving posters to explore potential practical implications, i.e., whether the poster with water shortage information would have an effective promotional effect only when information about “concern for the future” is presented (Study 4). We concluded with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the research findings.

Introduction

Ecological resource scarcity has been considered to be one of the greatest security risks in the 21st century. In 2003, the “competition for natural resources” was established by the European Security Strategy as a global challenge. Moreover, with the continuous growth of the global population and the increasing demand for resources, the United Nations even pointed out that conflicts over ecological resources would intensify in the coming decades. Taking water resources as an example, there are approximately 1.2 billion people facing water scarcity globally; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that an additional 80–100 million people will be exposed to water scarcity by 2025. However, although ecological resources are increasingly scarce, some reports have shown that pro-environmental behavioral improvements are not obvious, and a trend of decreasing environmental behaviors has even been demonstrated (e.g., ISSP Research Group, 2012).

Considering increasing ecological resource scarcity and lack of pro-environmental behavioral improvements in tandem, how to motivate individuals to take environmentally friendly actions when facing ecological resource scarcity to alleviate the pressure of growing ecological resource scarcity is worth studying. With the above in mind, the aim of this research was to explore under what conditions exposure to ecological resource scarcity would promote individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors. In other words, we seek to specify the moderating factor affecting associations between ecological resource scarcity and pro-environmental behaviors.

People tend to assume that reminders of ecological resource scarcity would undoubtedly promote individuals' pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). However, few studies have directly verified such an effect. Theoretically, life history theory explains how human beings choose strategies of allocating limited resources for adaptability from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. According to life history theory, in activities related to survival and reproduction, how to allocate limited time, resources and energy effectively is the most basic challenge that all organisms must face (Belsky, Scholmer, & Ellis, 2012; Charnov, 1993; Roff, 1992, 2002; Stearns, 1992), and the challenge is especially prominent at present, as ecological resources grow increasingly scarce. In fact, when faced with such challenges, the life history strategies that people choose to enact are different and vary along a slow-to-fast continuum (Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer, 2009; Figueredo et al., 2005; Nettle, 2010; Promislow & Harvey, 1990). Specifically, faster strategies are physiologically associated with earlier physiological development and sexual maturity and psychologically associated with taking more immediate interests than considering long-term consequences. Accordingly, individuals enacting faster strategies demonstrate more impulsive and risky behaviors. In contrast, slower strategies are associated with regard for future benefits through long-term planning and delayed gratification. More importantly, it is evolutionarily adaptive to enact both slower strategies and faster strategies to respond to ecological resource scarcity, and these strategies will further influence individuals’ behaviors, including PEB. In fact, PEB could be seen as a kind of delayed gratification behavior. Enacting PEB means sacrificing immediate benefits (e.g., saving natural resources) in the present to obtain delayed rewards (e.g., natural resources become more abundant) in the future. Following this logic, when exposed to ecological resource scarcity, individuals may enact slower strategies and behave in less eco-unfriendly ways, or, on the contrary, they may enact faster strategies and display more PEB.

Consistent with life history theory, related empirical studies have revealed that reminders of resource scarcity might lead to some opposite behaviors. On the one hand, economic resources scarcity would increase delayed gratification behaviors and prosocial behaviors, which are patterns consistent with slower life history strategies (e.g., Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012; Piff, Kraus, Stéphane Côté, Cheng, & Keltner, 2010). And people tended to harvest less from the resource in scarce than in abundance condition (Rutte, Wilke, & Messick, 1987). On the other hand, exposure to resource scarcity might prompt individuals to enact faster strategies, which guide them to behave more self-interestedly in a “carpe diem” fashion (e.g., Hill, Rodeheffer, Delpriore, & Butterfield, 2013; Laran & Salerno, 2013). For example, studies focusing on common pool resource sustainability found that low resource growth rate would lead to depletion (e.g., Kimbrough & Vostroknutov, 2015). As suggested by the life history theory and related studies, ecological resource scarcity will not always foster individuals' eco-friendly behavior. Thus, the question arises: under what conditions will reminders of ecological resource scarcity promote people's PEB? The current study aim to provide empirical evidence on how to promote individuals' adoption of environmentally friendly ways to cope with ecological resource scarcity from the psychological perspective.

In fact, many environmental problems result from a conflict between people's immediate desires rather than delayed rewards, whereby today's desires prevail over tomorrow's needs (van Vugt, Griskevicius, & Schultz, 2014); the personal trait related to this conflict can be referred as future orientation. The concept of future orientation captures the “extent to which individuals consider distant outcomes of their current behaviors and extent to which they are influenced by these potential outcomes” (Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, & Edwards, 1994, p. 743). In the present study, we focused mainly on future orientation to explore if it would moderate the effect of objective and perceived ecological resource scarcity on PEB. In the last several decades, future orientation has been proven to be positively associated with PEB, such as water-saving behaviors (Corral-Verdugo & Pinheiro, 2006), decreasing electricity use (Enzler, Diekmann, & Liebe, 2019), taking public transportation (Joireman, van Lange, & van Vugt, 2004), and so on. Some works have also verified its moderating effect on promoting PEB (e.g., Gu, Huang, Zhang, & Wang, 2015; Tam & Chan, 2017).

As defined above, future-oriented individuals attach importance to future consequences. Similar to other environmental problems, ecological resource scarcity may be thought of as posing no immediate threat at present (Carmi & Kimhi, 2015), and thus, people will seek to satisfy their immediate desires without concern for future consequences (Weber, 2017). However, the focal negative association will be improved by future orientation. When exposed to the concept of ecological resource scarcity, future-oriented individuals have insight into its serious and negative consequences in the future, and they will thus try to restrain from fulfilling their immediate desires to invest in the future through pro-environmental actions. Consistently, Carmi and Bartal (2014) found that environmental threats would be evaluated as more severe by individuals holding higher levels of future orientation. And a multilevel analysis showed that the association between individuals’ awareness of specific environmental problems and self-reported pro-environmental behaviors was enhanced in countries with high levels of future orientation (Tam & Chan, 2017).

Apart from concern for future consequences, future-oriented individuals also favor delaying rewards. Drawing on the construal level theory (CLT), actions can be represented at two levels: high-level construal, which is an abstract representation, and low-level construal, which is a concrete representation (Trope & Liberman, 2003). The perceived level of construal of an action will be affected by psychological distance. Specifically, temporally close actions are likely to elicit concrete construal, whereas those temporally distant are likely to elicit abstract construal. Applying CLT to future orientation, it can be reasoned that future orientation will influence how individuals construe their behavioral options. High levels of future orientation are mostly associated with high-level construal, whereas low levels of future orientation are mostly associated with low-level construal. Empirical studies have also revealed that future-oriented people favor high-level construal (van Beek, Handgraaf, & Antonides, 2017). Importantly, individuals with high-level construal prefer high-reward choices and therefore display more delayed gratification behaviors (Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006; Yi, Stuppy-Sullivan, Pickover, & Landes, 2017). In other words, future-oriented individuals attach more importance to delayed rewards than immediate benefits.

As we discussed before, when experiencing reminders of ecological resource scarcity, individuals can enact faster life-history strategies and then show less PEB or, in contrast, enact slower strategies and behave in more environmentally friendly ways. Because future orientation is associated with concerning for future consequences and favoring delaying rewards, it is adaptive for future-oriented individuals to enact slower strategies when facing ecological resource scarcity. In other words, individuals with higher levels of future orientation are likely to adopt more pro-environmental ways to respond to ecological resource scarcity. Previous research has also provided indirect evidence for the moderation hypothesis. For example, Gu et al. (2015) found positive associations among perceived air pollution and pro-environmental behavior intentions, and the associations were heightened for individuals who were future-oriented. Therefore, in the present study, we are interested in exploring the moderating role of future orientation on the association between ecological resource scarcity and PEB. Based on the discussions above, we hypothesized that future orientation would moderate the effect of ecological resource scarcity on PEB. Specifically, reminders of ecological resource scarcity would promote PEB for individuals holding high levels of future orientation, but the positive effect would disappear for individuals with low levels of future orientation.

In the present study, four studies were conducted to verify our moderation hypothesis. Study 1 aimed to test whether the association between country-level objective ecological resource scarcity and individual-level pro-environmental behaviors depends on country-level long-term orientation through a multilevel analysis of 30 countries. To replicate the results of Study 1 and clarify the causal effect at the individual level, we further conducted two studies. Through a cross-sectional survey, Study 2 explored whether future orientation would moderate the association between individuals’ perceived ecological resource scarcity and daily PEB frequencies. Study 3 sought to verify the moderation hypothesis again by manipulating perceived ecological resource scarcity. More importantly, based on evidence from the three preceding studies, Study 4 further explored the practical implications of the moderating effect. Given that information on ecological resource scarcity is often used in environmental protection publications to call on people to conserve energy, we designed different types of water-saving posters expressing different information (i.e., water resource scarcity or not, future orientation or not) to explore if the promotional effect would vary accordingly.

Section snippets

Study 1

In Study 1, we collected and analyzed multilevel data from 30 countries to investigate whether the relationship between country-level objective ecological resource scarcity and individual-level PEB would vary as a function of country-level future orientation.

Study 2

To establish the moderating effect of future orientation on the association between ecological resource scarcity and PEB at the individual level, a cross-sectional survey was employed in Study 2. We proposed that perceived ecological resource scarcity would positively predict daily PEB frequencies for individuals holding higher levels of future orientation but that the positive association would disappear for individuals with lower levels of future orientation.

Study 3

In Study 3, we sought to replicate the findings in Study 2 and to further establish a causal connection between ecological resource scarcity and PEB by manipulating the psychological experience of resource scarcity.

Study 4

Water resource scarcity is often presented on water-saving posters. However, there is no definite evidence that information on water resource scarcity can effectively promote people's water-saving behaviors. In Study 4, we explored which kind of water-saving poster has greater public impact. Based on our moderation hypothesis and the results obtained in focal studies, we proposed that the poster that includes both information on resource scarcity and future orientation has a greater promotional

General discussion

Focusing on two serious global issues, ecological resource scarcity and environmental protection, the present study explored the boundary condition for the positive effect of objective and perceived ecological resource scarcity on PEB. Drawing on the life history theory and CLT, we found that future orientation could moderate the effect of ecological resource scarcity on PEB at both the country (i.e., objective resource scarcity) and individual (i.e., perceived resource scarcity) levels.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declare that there are no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This paper was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31871126) and Beijing Cooperative Construction Project.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Dian Gu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Jiang Jiang: Conceptualization, Supervision, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Yue Zhang: Methodology, Resources, Funding acquisition. Ying Sun: Methodology, Resources, Writing - review & editing. Wen Jiang: Methodology, Resources. Xiaopeng Du: Methodology, Resources.

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