Influence of Awe on Green Consumption: The Mediating Effect of Psychological Ownership

Abstract

The increasing demand for environmental protection has given rise to burgeoning research on green consumption. The present research adds to this expanding literature by investigating a novel predictor of consumer green consumption: awe. As a self-transcendent emotion, awe arises when people encounter perceptually vast stimuli that overwhelm their existing knowledge and mental structures, and, meanwhile, this also elicits a need for accommodation. This research proposes and demonstrates that, compared with happiness and a neutral affective state, experience of awe promotes green consumption via an enhanced psychological ownership of nature. Moreover, this research identifies a condition by showing that, while awe promotes green consumption when interdependent self-construal is activated, this effect diminishes when independent self-construal is activated.

The Impact of Awe Induced by COVID-19 Pandemic on Green Consumption Behavior in China

“…This study expands on previous studies, not only suggesting different valence for awe but also exploring these two types of awe on the same stimulus (COVID-19) for the first time. This study complements the points of Yang, et al [ 44 ] and Wang, et al [ 45 ] from the perspective of connection, suggesting that positive and negative awe have different reactions to the requirement of accommodation to affect different downstream variables. Specifically, positive awe of COVID-19 helps publics form enduring commitments to wildlife, natural resources, and social communities; negative awe of COVID-19 does not emphasize connection and stimulates the intrinsic motivation to protect their own security and interest.…”

“…Piff, et al [ 19 ] and Yang, et al [ 44 ] believed that narrative recall and video clips can capture the emotion of awe at the level of features and states. Previous studies have experimentally induced given emotions and control state (neutral affect) by having subjects watch edited videos of the specific elicitor—a well-validated method for evoking target emotions [ 17 , 45 ].…”

“…To ensure that the videos could elicit the target emotions, we followed the research of Wang, et al [ 45 ] and Yang, et al [ 7 ], and adopted the suggestions of two psychology and a management professor to edit and modify the selected video content. Finally, we edited three videos: a 4-minute clip to elicit positive awe of COVID-19, composed of the bravery and selflessness of the medical staff, optimistic and open-minded nature charm, the greatness of life, the solidarity of collectivism, the adherence, obedience and commitment to duty accompanied by touching music; a 4-minute clip that induced negative awe of COVID-19, consisting of anxiety about the unknown, fear of death and viruses, worry about their family, accompanied by suspenseful music; and a 4-minute lecture video from MOOC as control condition, which has been adopted frequently to induce no strong emotion.…”

How to Solve the Social Norm Conflict Dilemma of Green Consumption: The Moderating Effect of Self-Affirmation

“…Green consumption, also known as sustainable consumption, refers to consumption behavior wherein consumers consider the environmental impact when buying, using, or disposing products to minimize environmental harm (Carlson et al, 1993;Roozen and De Pelsmacker, 2000;Wang et al, 2019). On the one hand, environmental degradation is largely caused by residents' unreasonable consumption habits and consumption patterns, and green consumption is crucial in solving environmental problems (Smith et al, 2012;.…”

Influence of Air Quality on Pro-environmental Behavior of Chinese Residents: From the Perspective of Spatial Distance

“…Many researchers also hold that individual norm, the sense of consequence, attribution of responsibility, and values are important determinants of pro-environmental behavior, explaining it through the norm-activation model (NAM) (Schwartz, 1977) and the value-belief-norm theory (VBN theory) (Stern et al, 1999), and begin to notice the influence of economic and social conditions and other external factors. With the increasing awareness of environmental issues, current studies pay a growing attention to the determinants of pro-environmental behavior (Geng et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2019).…”