The Influence Of Social Class On Pro-environmental Behavior

With increasing environmental problems,the individual environmental protection behavior has been paid more attention by various researchers.Previous studies have focused largely on individuals’ attention to the environment,but neglected the specific pro-environment behavior.However,it was found that the association between environmental attitudes and environmental behaviors was not consistent enough in the study.Therefore,it has important significance to explore the factors between individuals and the environment from environmental behaviors.In addition,most social sciences pay attention to psychological factors in individual environmental behaviors,while environmental sciences and a few social sciences pay attention to the social structure variables in individual environmental behaviors.Few studies have explored how the interaction between social structure variables and individual psychological variables influences people’s pro-environment behavior tendency.In order to promote the ecological protection,this study based on variables of social structure and individual psychological factors,trying to describe the relationship between individuals with different social classes and environmental behavior and learn more about psychological mechanisms.This study attempts to explore which factors have a moderating effect for the influence of social class on various types of pro-environmental behavior.This study was divided into three parts,a total of five empirical research.Study 1 aims to explore the relationship between social class and pro-environmental behavior.Study 1explored the influence of social class on pro-environmental behavior by large-scale social survey,questionnaire survey and laboratory experiment.Research 2 manipulates the subjective social class perception of individuals to explore the psychological mechanism of social class influencing pro-environmental behavior.The purpose of study 3 is to explore the moderating effect of social context and reputation concern in the influence of social class on various types of pro-environmental behavior.All analyses were carried out using SPSS,version 26.The results showed as follows:(1)In the aspects of relationship between social class and pro-environmental behavior,a positive correlation was explored by different research methods,that is,participants with high social class have more willing in pro-environmental activities.(2)In the aspects of the mediating mechanism that social class influencing pro-environmental behavior,there is a positive influence between different social classes pro-environmental behavior through materialistic values.Specifically,participants with high social class have the lower the materialistic values,and thus have the higher the pro-environmental behavior tendency.(3)In the aspects of the moderating mechanism that social class influencing pro-environmental behavior,social context and reputation concern have no significant moderating effect on the influence of social class on pro-environmental time intention.However,when the dependent variable is the pro-environmental time behavior,the social context has a significant indirect moderating effect on the pro-environmental behavior of social class.Specifically,in private situation,participants with high materialistic values were less likely to devote time to pro-environmental behavior,regardless of the level of fame concern.(4)In the aspects of the moderating mechanism that social class influencing pro-environmental behavior,social context and reputation concern have no significant moderating effect on the influence of social class on pro-environmental money intention.However,when the dependent variable is the pro-environmental money behavior,the social context has a significant direct and indirect moderating effect on the pro-environmental behavior of social class.Specifically,the proportion of pro-environment money behavior of participants with high reputation concern in the public context increased with the increase of social class perception.In the private context,participants with low reputation concern tended to show a decreasing proportion of their pro-environment money behavior as social class perception increased.In addition,participants with high or low levels of reputation concern gradually reduced the proportion of pro-environmental monetary behavior as their materialistic values increased.This study shows that social class has a positive influence on individuals’ pro-environment behavior tendency.In addition,we found that higher-class individuals engaged in more pro-environmental behaviors via the mediating effect of materialistic values and the moderating effect of external environmental factors and internal psychological variables.That is to say,when investigating pro-environmental behavior,we should pay enough attention to the difference of social context and reputation concern in different social classes and make adjustments accordingly.It will be evaluated for use to reduce environmental problems and promote individuals to improve their environmental awareness.It can provide valuable information for relevant departments to organize and manage individual pro-environment behavior.It provides suggestions for reducing environmental problems.It can reduce the environmental risk brought by human activities and enhance the effect of environmental sustainable development.