Gonzalo Palomo-Vélez

Assistant Professor of Social Psychology

Reducing the gap between pro-environmental disposition and behavior: The role of feeling power


Journal article


Mengchen Dong, Gonzalo Palomo-Vélez, Song Wu
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 51(3), 2021 Mar, pp. 262-272


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APA   Click to copy
Dong, M., Palomo-Vélez, G., & Wu, S. (2021). Reducing the gap between pro-environmental disposition and behavior: The role of feeling power. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 51(3), 262–272. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12733


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Dong, Mengchen, Gonzalo Palomo-Vélez, and Song Wu. “Reducing the Gap between pro-Environmental Disposition and Behavior: The Role of Feeling Power.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 51, no. 3 (March 2021): 262–272.


MLA   Click to copy
Dong, Mengchen, et al. “Reducing the Gap between pro-Environmental Disposition and Behavior: The Role of Feeling Power.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 51, no. 3, Mar. 2021, pp. 262–72, doi:10.1111/jasp.12733.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{dong2021a,
  title = {Reducing the gap between pro-environmental disposition and behavior: The role of feeling power},
  year = {2021},
  month = mar,
  issue = {3},
  journal = {Journal of Applied Social Psychology},
  pages = {262-272},
  volume = {51},
  doi = {10.1111/jasp.12733},
  author = {Dong, Mengchen and Palomo-Vélez, Gonzalo and Wu, Song},
  month_numeric = {3}
}

Environmental issues are some of the most pressing threats the world is facing nowadays. In this context, motivating individual pro-environmental behavior becomes highly relevant. One strategy is to harness people's pro-environmental dispositions (e.g., biospheric values, pro-environmental attitudes). Although acknowledging the need to behave pro-environmentally lies at the core of these dispositions, the extent to which they are reflected in day-to-day pro-environmental practices fluctuates to a great extent. How to bridge this gap between dispositions and behaviors in pro-environmentalism? This research tests a novel psychological solution, that is, to heighten subjective feelings of power. Power depicts people's control over their own and others? outcomes. Two studies (total N = 338, with n = 200 in Study 1 and n = 138 in Study 2) manipulated people's situational sense of high versus low power (by recalling and writing about relevant incidents), measured pro-environmental dispositions (biospheric values in Studies 1 and 2; attitude toward a specific environmental cause in Study 2), and examined their effects on pro-environmental behaviors (spending time on environmental persuasion in Study 1 and spending money on environmental donation in Study 2). Overall, both studies revealed that pro-environmental dispositions predicted pro-environmental behaviors, but only when the actors were prompted to experience a high instead of a low sense of power. The findings illuminate power as an important and viable communication tactic?to orient people toward their dispositions and practice what they preach in pro-environmentalism.

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