"Mine" Or "Ours": Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Psychological Ownership On Pro-environmental Behavior

Protecting the environment is an important prerequisite to ensure long-term stable economic growth and realize sustainable development.The construction of ecological civilization cannot be separated from the active participation of the public,but in real life,individuals rarely take the initiative to practice pro-environmental behaviors.As an internal driving factor of individuals,psychological ownership is considered as an effective means to boost individuals’ pro-environmental behavior,but the research on psychological ownership under the environmental background has just started and needs further exploration.Based on this,this study relies on the theoretical basis of psychological ownership,social loafing and psychological resistance,and from the perspective of environmental psychological ownership,explores the influence of individual-oriented and collective-oriented psychological ownership on individual pro-environmental behavior,and introduces normative appeals as moderating variables,constructs a research model of individual pro-environmental behavior combining internal psychological factors with external factors,and designs two studies to verify it.The first study chooses water resources as the object of environmental psychological ownership,which is divided into two parts: Study 1A and Study 1B.In Study 1A,the situational experiment method was used to verify the positive influence of psychological ownership on pro-environmental behavior and the difference of the influence of different oriented psychological ownership on individual pro-environmental behavior.Study 1B uses field experiments to test the difference between individual-oriented psychological ownership and collective-oriented psychological ownership on pro-environmental behavior again by measuring individual’s actual behavior,and reveals the mediating effect of perceived responsibility in it.In the second study,the scene experiment method was adopted,and nature was selected as the object of environmental psychological ownership.On the basis of repeating the conclusion of the study,the external influencing factor of individual pro-environmental behavior-normative appeal was included in the research scope to explore its regulatory role in the influence of different oriented psychological ownership on pro-environmental behavior.The results show that:(1)Psychological ownership has a significant positive impact on individual pro-environmental behavior.Both individual-oriented psychological ownership and collective-oriented psychological ownership have a positive impact on individual’s pro-environmental behavior;(2)In general,compared with collective-oriented psychological ownership,stimulating individual-oriented psychological ownership can make individuals have stronger pro-environmental behavior;(3)Perceived responsibility mediates the influence of individual-oriented psychological ownership and collective-oriented psychological ownership on pro-environmental behavior;(4)Normative appeals play a moderating role in the influence of different orientations of psychological ownership on pro-environmental behavior.Specifically,under the condition of descriptive normative appeals,compared with collective-oriented psychological ownership,individual-oriented psychological ownership has a stronger impact on promoting pro-environmental behavior;Under the condition of n injunctive normative appeals,collective-oriented psychological ownership plays a stronger role in promoting pro-environmental behavior than individual-oriented psychological ownership.This study develops the research of psychological ownership in the field of environment,confirms the positive influence of psychological ownership on individual’s pro-environmental behavior,and further explores the influence different influence and boundary conditions of different orientations of psychological ownership,which provides a theoretical basis for using psychological ownership to influence individual’s pro-environment behavior in actual situations,and also provides a reference for relevant departments and enterprises to formulate appropriate and effective strategies.