A Study On The Spillover Effect And Mechanism Of Frugality And Efficiency Behavior In Environmental Protection Activities

Recently,environmental psychology has found that a host of environmental issues are rooted in individual eco-friendly acts,and emphasized that intervention in individual environmental behaviors is conducive to environmental governance.For example,curtailment behaviors promoted by frugal habits can reduce energy use,or efficiency behaviors driven by energy technology development can improve energy utilization.However,environmental protection is a process of complex interaction between humans and the environment.The individual can protect the environment by making a pro-environment behavior once.But environmental protection is a continuous process,which requires individuals to continuously make pro-environment behavior.Therefore,the study of environmental problems needs to break through the thinking of“behavior in isolation” and pay attention to the potential causal relationship between behaviors,namely the behavioral spillover effect.The behavioral spillover effect indicates that intervention for one behavior may increase or decrease other non-target behaviors(positive or negative spillover).It suggests the target pro-environmental behavior may increase or reduce the follow-up non-target pro-environmental behaviors.The former indicates the environmental intervention strategy has the function of “throw a sprat to catch a herring”.The latter shows that the environmental intervention strategy becomes a little less efficient and even leads to a rebound effect.Hence,we should analyze the behavioral spillover effect to explain the generalization or inconsistency of pro-environmental behaviors and consider environmental governance from a global perspective.Yet,as a cardinal target behavior of environmental intervention,curtailment and efficiency behaviors are also low-cost and high-frequency or high-cost and lowfrequency pro-environmental behaviors,which involve different degrees of loss.According to prospect theory and the loss aversion effect,the loss is a significant factor affecting the generation and inhibition of individual environmental behaviors.Hence,in the spillover effect of pro-environmental behavior,is the low-cost and highfrequency curtailment behaviors positive spillover? Or will high-cost and lowfrequency efficiency behaviors positive spillover? No studies have yet deeply explored this scientific question.Therefore,we mainly explored the spillover effect,spillover mechanism,and intervention mode of curtailment versus efficiency behaviors in ecofriendly acts.On the one hand,it can excavate the rebound effect of curtailment versus efficiency intervention strategies and follow-up eco-friendly behaviors,and optimize the research on intervention and spillover effect of pro-environmental behavior.On the other hand,it can play the role of curtailment versus efficiency intervention measures to change the follow-up non-target environmental behaviors and then deeply carry out environmental governance.We adopted three series of experiments to explore the spillover mechanism of curtailment versus efficiency behaviors in a progressive way.The research mainly used recall paradigm,situation simulation,python program to manipulate curtailment behaviors and efficiency behaviors and used scale,behavior situation simulation,and implicit association test(IAT)to measure the follow-up non-target pro-environment behaviors.Study 1 adopted three experiments to explore the spillover effects of curtailment versus efficiency behaviors among green activists and compared them with the control group to facilitate the follow-up study.It included explicit(experiments 1and 2)and implicit spillover effects(experiment 3).Based on relevant literature,study2 took environmental self-identity as the potential mediator to explore the internal mediating mechanism of curtailment versus efficiency behaviors among green activities(experiment 4).Study 3 introduced environmental labeling(environmentalist label vs.non-environmentalist label)and the numerical support of environmental values(majority support vs.minority support)as potential moderating variables.Under different environmental labeling conditions(experiment 5)and the different numerical support of environmental values(experiment 6),we took two experiments to further clarify the boundary conditions and intervention methods of the curtailment versus efficiency behavior spillover effect.The findings suggested that:(1)Compared with efficiency behaviors and control group,curtailment behaviors can more positive spillover(explicit and implicit spillover effect is consistent),and urge participants to take more general and specific intended pro-environment behaviors.Meanwhile,in the spillover effect,the efficiency behaviors were not significantly different from the control group.(2)Environmental self-identity mediated the spillover effects of curtailment versus efficiency behavior.Compared with efficiency behaviors,curtailment behaviors could improve the participants' environmental self-identity and increase their general and specific intended proenvironment behavior tendency.(3)Environmental labeling moderated the spillover mechanism of curtailment versus efficiency behaviors,and only under the label of nonenvironmentalist,the mediating effect of environmental self-identity was significant.It shows that the label of non-environmentalist can significantly reduce the environmental self-identity of curtailment behaviors,rather than efficiency behaviors,and then promote the participants to reduce the general,specific and collective non-target proenvironment behaviors.(4)The numerical support of environmental values moderated the spillover mechanism of curtailment versus efficiency behaviors.Although the mediating effect of environmental self-identity is significant under both minority and majority support conditions,minority support could strengthen the relationship between environmental self-identity and collective intended pro-environmental behavior tendency more than majority support.Simultaneously,the numerical support of environmental values can only adjust the relationship between environmental selfidentity and collective non-target pro-environmental behavior tendency,but not the relationship between environmental self-identity and general or specific non-target proenvironmental behaviors.Our study further found the significant role of curtailment versus efficiency behaviors in behavioral spillover or consistency.It also can clarify the differences of spillover effect between curtailment and efficiency behaviors and explains the reasons.That will contribute to supplement and improve the pro-environmental behavior spillover,self-perception theory,and cognitive dissonance theory.And this study respectively proposed different regulatory effect paths to find the boundary conditions and intervention ways of curtailment versus efficiency behavior spillover mechanism,with environmental labeling and the numerical support of environmental values as regulatory variables to build moderated intermediary models.To a certain extent,it discovers a scientific basis for understanding the continuity and volatility of people's environmental behaviors and yet contributes to promoting eco-friendly protection,formulating public environmental protection policies,and establishing a long-term green protection mechanism.