The Effect Of Socioeconomic Status On Pro-environmental Attitude

Recently,environmental issues have become increasingly prominent,causing global attention to environmental protection.The double carbon goals(i.e.carbon peaking and carbon neutrality)also reflect our determination to protect the ecological environment.For this reason,environmental issues need the attention of citizens of all socioeconomic backgrounds.Pro-environmental attitudes reflect individuals’ beliefs,emotions,and behavioral tendencies towards environmental protection activities,which can predict individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors to a certain extent and have great significance for environmental sustainability.Due to the importance of promoting the pro-environmental attitude of citizens,this study discusses the factors that affect the pro-environmental attitude.Specifically,this study believes that individuals’ socioeconomic status can affect their pro-environmental attitudes,and based on the scarcity mentality theory,the psychological mechanism of this influencing process is theoretically discussed and tested.Three research designs were used to test the theoretical hypothesis.In study 1,Chinese citizens were taken as subjects and various variables were measured through a questionnaire survey in the same period of time.Finally,235 effective data were obtained.Study 2 was a situational experiment,which manipulated the perception of socioeconomic status.Participants wrote short words after viewing the pictures of socioeconomic status manipulation and then assessed other variables.The final effective data was 213,including 107 from the low socioeconomic status manipulation group and 106 from the high socioeconomic status manipulation group.In study 3,participants comprised 331 full-time employees of Chinese enterprises.According to the logical sequence of the hypothesis model,a three-wave questionnaire survey was designed to obtain the research data.Each data collection interval was two weeks,and the data of each period were matched and analyzed through the mobile phone tail number after the completion of data collection.The results show that socioeconomic status can positively predict the future time orientation of individuals and further affect their pro-environmental attitudes.The pro-environmental climate moderates the relationship between future time orientation and pro-environmental attitude.When the pro-environmental climate is weak,there is a significant positive correlation between future time orientation and a pro-environmental attitude.However,under a strong pro-environmental climate,the pro-environmental attitude of individuals is always higher.This study provides a new perspective to explain the relationship between socioeconomic status and pro-environmental attitudes.