其他摘要 | Environmental problems threaten the fate of all humanity, and there is an urgent need to address the environmental crisis. In assessing future sustainable development goals, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the factors that influence human pro-environmental behavior. Previous studies on the factors influencing pro-environmental behavior have focused on individual micro-level (including motivations and impediments to pro-environmental behavior) and group-level (mainly from the perspective of social identity), focusing on the effects of internal variables within individuals or external variables such as situations acting on actors, and very few studies have explored the interactions between actors. In the process of interpersonal communication, people are inevitably influenced by the words and behaviors of others, exchanging ideas and influencing behavior through sharing, advising, and persuading. In addition, there may be differences in pro-environmental behaviour between age groups, with older people being more able to implement individual environmental behaviours, while younger people will engage in more pro-environmental behaviour in the public sphere. This study explores the public's willingness to persuade others with two contrasts, self-acting and persuading others, and explores potential age differences. then combs through the literature to identify several possible influences and confirms the derived hypothesis tests with a survey experiment study.
First, Study 1 investigated the public's willingness to persuade others. 300 valid data were collected through an online questionnaire, which measured the subjects' willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior and to persuade others to engage in pro-environmental behavior, respectively. Pearson's correlation analysis showed that self-practice and persuasion were moderately correlated, and paired samples t-tests showed that self-practice was significantly higher than persuasion on all dimensions of pro-environmental behaviour, indicating that the public was less willing to persuade others to participate in pro-environmental behaviour than self-practice. The results of the ANOVA showed that after controlling for demographic variables, practicing on one's own was still higher than persuading others.
Secondly, Study 2 discusses the factors that influence the public's willingness to persuade. Several possible influencing factors, namely social norms, perceived costs, environmental and personal benefits, and privacy, were combed through the literature and validated. Based on the results of Study 1,three questions each on pro- environmental behaviours that were more and less likely to be persuasive were selected from the Study 1 questionnaire to validate each of these factors. 260 valid data were collected through an online questionnaire. Paired-samples t-tests confirmed that social norms, perceived costs and personal benefits had a significant effect on the public's willingness to persuade others to engage in pro-environmental behaviours.
In order to verify the influence of the above factors on willingness to persuade, an experimental design was required to test for causality. Therefore, descriptive norms and perceived cost were chosen as representative factors to verify the causal relationship with willingness to persuade. Stu即3 first examined the relationship with descriptive norms, using a between-subjects design in which 244 valid data were collected online and subjects were divided into a high norms group, a low norms group and a control group to read the corresponding text material, after which the effect of the material intervention was measured. One-way ANOVA results showed that the high descriptive norm mean was significantly higher than the low descriptive norm, indicating that the high descriptive norm significantly promoted the public's willingness to persuade.
Study 4 had the same experimental design as Study 3, examining the mechanisms of perceived cost influence, again using a between-subj ects design, with 240 valid data collected online and subjects divided into a high-cost group, a low-cost group and a control group, who read the corresponding text material and later measured the effect of the material intervention. The results showed that the mean value of low perceived cost was significantly higher than that of high perceived cost, indicating that low perceived cost significantly contributed to the public's willingness to persuade.
The results of this study show that although the public's willingness to persuade others is high overall, it is lower when compared to their own practice, and there are no significant differences between age groups in terms of their own practice and persuasion of others. Descriptive norms and perceived cost are the main factors influencing the public's willingness to persuade, and high descriptive normative information and low perceived cost of pro-environmental behaviour are more likely to promote the public's willingness to persuade.
This study is a novel approach in the field of pro-environmental behavior. It is a meaningful attempt to examine the influencing factors through the perspective of persuading others, and to verify the possible influencing factors by using an empirical research method based on the literature. |
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