The Impact Of Green On Environmental Protection: Evidence From Color Metaphors

The issue of environmental protection has been one of the hot topics of academic research in recent years.In the field of environmental protection,the use of "green" is quite common.People often not only equate the meaning of green with environmental protection,but publicity about environmental protection also often uses the color green as a representative color.This phenomenon means that there may be a psychological relationship between green and environmental protection.Although the connection between green and environmental protection in daily life is quite close,previous studies have seldom focused on the possible psychological mechanisms behind the association.This study focuses on the connection between green and environmental protection.It first sorts out the research on green in the field of psychology,and then summarizes the psychological theory of color,analyzes and proposes the theoretical mechanism that is used to explain green and environmental protection----metaphor.Later,based on the metaphor theory,the metaphorical connection between green and environmental protection has become psychological reality.Based on this,the current study uses college students as research subjects,and through four layers of experiments,explores whether there is a real metaphorical connection between green and environmental protection from multiple perspectives,and tries to further explore the impact of green on pro-environmental behavior on this basis.In order to provide a control group for the formal study,pre-experiments were conducted in the form of an online survey to find out which color can represent environmental protection or environmental pollution best.As a result,it was found that of the eleven colors provided,green is the most representative of environmental protection and black is the most representative of environmental pollution.Based on this,our next experiment used green and black as controls for experimental manipulations.Study 1 used two factors(color environment description:green environment vs.black environment)experimental design,trying to explore whether the green environmental description would enhance the association of the concept of environmental protection from the perspective of semantic concept.The results showed that the participants who described the green environment filled out more environmental protection-related vocabulary in the next group word task;while the participants who described the black environment did not fill in the words related to environmental protection.Study 2 adopts the Stroop paradigm.The "green" inquiry is changed from the semantic point of view of experiment 1 to the visual angle,that is,visually green,and whether the concept of environmental protection can initiate the green metaphor representation.It was found that when the environmental protection word was presented in green color,the response time was significantly shorter than that of the red or black.In Study 3,the concept of environmental protection was deepened into the intention of environmental protection behavior on the basis of study 2,and two factors(experimental tool color:green vs.black)experiment design was used to explore whether people's intentions for pro-environmental purchase behavior would also be affected by green color.The effect of perception.As a result,it was found that participants who used the green color shopping list preferred to purchase environmentally-friendly products,while those using the black color shopping list did not show significant purchase intentions for pro-environmental products.Study 4 explores whether performing "green" behavior while "green" is extended to "green" behavior will have an inhibitory effect on the subsequent intention of environmental behavior,that is,the licensing effect of pro-environmental behavior.As a result,it was found that when the subjects were primed the polluted environment they had experienced,the participants who painted green were less inclined to protect the environment than those who painted black,which resulted in the licensing effect of environmental behavior.In summary,this study explores the metaphorical connection between green and environmental protection,which has important theoretical and practical significance.This study explores the role of green in the promotion of environmental awareness by demonstrating semantic perspectives,sensory perspectives,and the metaphorical relationship between behavioral perspectives and environmental protection,and complements the theoretical explanations of the close relationship between green and environmental protection in psychology.At the same time,the results of this studyhave certain practical significance for the promotion of environmental protection.In practice,we can choose green as the background color to enhance people's awareness of environmental protection,thus promoting people to take more environmental protection behavior.However,be cautious about adopting green-related behaviors(such as green painting)to prevent retroaction.