Unleashing the Power of Connection: How Adolescents’ Prosocial Propensity Drives Ecological and Altruistic Behaviours

Abstract

Both altruistic and ecological behaviours are considered prosocially driven behaviours, but our understanding of what motivates action in either the human or ecological domain is still in its infancy. Our goal was to assess connection to nature, connection to people, and connection to country as mediators of the relationship between prosocial propensity and prosocial behaviours in both the ecological and human domains. This study used honesty-humility as an indicator of prosocial propensity. Data for the study were collected through online surveys in Spanish. The survey was answered by 438 adolescent participants aged 11–19 years. The present study demonstrates that personal prosocial propensity can be directed to a particular domain of prosocial behaviour (ecological or altruistic) through the individual’s connection to the relevant domain. Specifically, the effect of prosocial propensity on ecological behaviour was positively mediated by connection to people and connection to nature, but negatively mediated by connection to country. For altruistic behaviour, the effect of prosocial propensity was positive via connection to people, nature, and country. Future research is called for, in particular, to examine the role of connection to country in ecological behaviour.

Predictors of Pro-Environmental Behaviors in Adolescence: A Scoping Review

“…However, the studies by Ernst et al [10] and Krettenauer [56] reveal no significant link between feeling morally obliged to act in pro-environmental ways and adolescents' PEB. For connectedness with nature, all other studies suggest that having contact with nature, feeling an emotional connection with nature (e.g., being part of the natural world), and feeling empathetic towards living beings, is associated with PEB in adolescence [12,51,53,56,57,62,82,87]. For climate change concern, adolescents who are worried about climate change also adopt more PEB [43,49,58,77,79,81].…”

Honesty‐humility predicts humanitarian prosocial behavior via social connectedness: A parallel mediation examining connectedness to community, nation, humanity, and nature

“…Within an environmental domain, research has shown openness to experience and extraversion may be the most significant personality predictors of pro-environmental behavior (Brick & Lewis, 2016;Markowitz, Goldberg, Ashton & Lee, 2012). Interestingly, more recent research (Duong & Pensini, 2023;Neaman, Montero, Pensini et al, 2023;Neaman, Pensini, Zabel et al, 2022;Otto, Pensini, Zabel et al, 2021) has positioned honesty-humility as an important personality predictor in the environmental domain. The latter is consistent with findings pertaining to prosocial behavior toward humans, where Thielmann, Spadaro, and Balliet's (2020) recent meta-analysis has demonstrated that of eight broad and 43 narrow personality predictors, Ashton and Lee's (2007) honestyhumility trait from the HEXACO model of personality predicted prosocial behavior above and beyond all other broad personality constructs.…”