De Dominicis Stefano, Schultz P Wesley, Bonaiuto Marino
Department of Business and Management, LUISS Guido Carli UniversityRome, Italy.
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, Sapienza Università di RomaRome, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2017 Jun 28;8:1065. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01065. eCollection 2017.
Concerns for environmental issues are important drivers of sustainable and pro-environmental behaviors, and can be differentiated between those with a self-enhancing (egoistic) vs. self-transcendent (biospheric) psychological foundation. Yet to date, the dominant approach for promoting pro-environmental behavior has focused on highlighting the benefits to others or nature, rather than appealing to self-interest. Building on the Inclusion Model for Environmental Concern, we argue that egoistic and biospheric environmental concerns, respectively, conceptualized as self-interest and altruism, are hierarchically structured, such that altruism is inclusive of self-interest. Three studies show that self-interested individuals will behave more pro-environmentally when the behavior results in a personal benefit (but not when there is exclusively an environmental benefit), while altruistic individuals will engage in pro-environmental behaviors when there are environmental benefits, and critically, when there are personal benefits. The reported findings have implications for programs and policies designed to promote pro-environmental behavior, and for social science research aimed at understanding human responses to a changing environment.
对环境问题的关注是可持续和环保行为的重要驱动因素，并且可以根据其心理基础是自我提升（利己主义）还是自我超越（生物圈）进行区分。然而，迄今为止，促进环保行为的主要方法侧重于强调对他人或自然的益处，而非诉诸个人利益。基于环境关注的包容模型，我们认为，分别被概念化为自我利益和利他主义的利己主义和生物圈环境关注是层次结构的，即利他主义包含自我利益。三项研究表明，当行为带来个人利益时（但仅带来环境利益时则不然），利己主义的个体将表现出更环保的行为，而利他主义的个体在有环境利益时，以及至关重要的是，在有个人利益时，都会参与环保行为。报告的研究结果对旨在促进环保行为的计划和政策，以及旨在理解人类对不断变化的环境的反应的社会科学研究具有启示意义。
