1 Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara.
2 Department of Psychology, Kobe University.
Psychol Sci. 2016 Oct;27(10):1331-1339. doi: 10.1177/0956797616660078. Epub 2016 Sep 29.
Research on sustainability behaviors has been based on the assumption that increasing personal concerns about the environment will increase proenvironmental action. We tested whether this assumption is more applicable to individualistic cultures than to collectivistic cultures. In Study 1, we compared 47 countries ( N = 57,268) and found that they varied considerably in the degree to which environmental concern predicted support for proenvironmental action. National-level individualism explained the between-nation variability above and beyond the effects of other cultural values and independently of person-level individualism. In Study 2, we compared individualistic and collectivistic nations (United States vs. Japan; N = 251) and found culture-specific predictors of proenvironmental behavior. Environmental concern predicted environmentally friendly consumer choice among European Americans but not Japanese. For Japanese participants, perceived norms about environmental behavior predicted proenvironmental decision making. Facilitating sustainability across nations requires an understanding of how culture determines which psychological factors drive human action.
可持续性行为的研究基于这样一种假设，即个人对环境的关注增加会导致更多的环保行动。我们测试了这一假设是否更适用于个人主义文化，而不是集体主义文化。在研究 1 中，我们比较了 47 个国家（N=57268），发现环境关注对支持环保行动的程度存在很大差异。国家层面的个人主义解释了国家之间的差异，超越了其他文化价值观的影响，并且独立于个人层面的个人主义。在研究 2 中，我们比较了个人主义和集体主义国家（美国与日本；N=251），发现了环保行为的文化特定预测因素。环境关注预测了欧洲裔美国人的环保消费选择，但对日本人没有预测作用。对于日本参与者来说，对环境行为的感知规范预测了他们的环保决策。要在各国实现可持续性，需要了解文化如何决定哪些心理因素驱动人类行为。
