Psychological Drivers of Sustainable Choice

Individual pro-environmental behaviour is essential to address the environmental crisis the entire world is currently facing. To better understand the psychological processes underlying the sustainable behaviour, the present study aimed at investigating the interplay between implicit and explicit sustainable attitudes, eco-anxiety, empathy and generalized anxiety in predicting sustainable choice. Self-report measures and a battery of four Implicit Association Tests (IAT), for sustainable, clinical, economic and moral domains, were administered to a sample of 68 italian participants (M = 25.471; SD = 5.012). A sub-sample of 65 participants (M = 25.431; SD = 5.074) completed a compensation module where they could choose to donate a portion of their earned money to environmental organizations, providing a measure of pro-environmental behaviour. The results indicated that different psychological factors drive different aspects of sustainability. Implicit sustainable attitude emerged to be closely interconnected with other implicit domains, but seems to be hindered by generalized anxiety. A central role emerged for empathy in shaping eco-anxiety. Specifically, while empathic concern enhanced eco-anxiety levels, perspective-taking was a negative predictor. Empathic concern together with eco-anxiety explained 30% of the variance in explicit sustainable attitudes. Finally, the donation behaviour was predicted by explicit attitude towards sustainability and implicit moral attitudes. These findings underscore the complexity of pro-environmental behaviour, emphasizing the need to integrate emotional, cognitive and moral dimensions to promote sustainable choices.