4.1 The relation between outward orientation, environmental concerns and PEBs
In line with the literature, our results show a positive, but not a very strong correlation between environmental concerns and pro-environmental behaviour, corroborating the existence of the green gap. Surprisingly, helplessness was also positively, albeit weakly, correlated with pro-environmental behaviour and strongly with environmental concerns. In other words, given their heightened environmental concern, helpless individuals seem to be relatively passive. The findings are consistent with the extant literature and international surveys showing that helplessness predominates among feelings related to climate change (ESS, 2018; Verplanken et al., 2020). Consequently, it may deprive individuals of the sense of agency and, thus, set bounds on their involvement in PEBs.
Furthermore, in accordance with the expectations, horizontal collectivism, future orientation and prosociality - as components of the outward orientation construct - showed to be positively related to pro-environmental behaviour and environmental concern but also helplessness. In line with Landry et al. (2018), this could indicate that emotional responses to the environmental crisis - in this study proxied by concerns and helplessness - could share some joint antecedents such as a general tendency to worry that results in environmental disengagement. Future research is needed to pinpoint this confounding variable or to identify measures increasing environmental self-efficacy without hampering the sense of concern as it could be one of the crucial aspects in closing the green gap. Interestingly, the only variable that showed a negative (albeit weak) correlation with PEBs was immediate orientation and no variable was significantly negatively related to environmental concerns.
Generally, the data show a straightforward pattern related to outward orientation: the more concerned and the more outwardly oriented individuals are, the more PEBs they adopt. The only exception included highly outwarded individuals with low in helplessness for whom concerns did not predict pro-environmental behaviour. This corroborates the view that outward orientation could counterbalance negative emotional responses which could result in environmental idleness. The results show similar patterns to those observed by Loy and Spence (2020). Due to reduced psychological distance, individuals who see themselves as a part of the global community adopt more pro-environmental behaviours. Possibly heightened outward orientation plays a similar role, particularly in reducing the spatial, social and temporal distance to the consequences of climate change and, thus, fostering the sense that environmental issues matter for all people.
For self-centred individuals, in turn, we observed a consistent drop in pro-environmental behaviour with the increase in self-centred orientation. The more helpless they felt, the more visible the drop was. However, when they reported their concerns to be high, their self-centred orientation ceased to be an obstacle in performing PEBs. The data show another interesting pattern: People with the lowest self-centred orientation (-1 SD) reported relatively high involvement in PEBs regardless of their concerns for climate change or feelings of helplessness. On the other hand, people with the highest self-centred orientation (+ 1 SD) also reported more PEBs but only when their concern for the climate was high. The results, thus, show that there is considerable scope for increasing concerns among self-centred individuals. This encouraging result seems to be important in the context of previous cross-cultural findings. Specifically, in individualistic countries, concerned individuals were willing to pay more to mitigate the negative effects of climate change when they were sufficiently concerned (Eom et al., 2016). Given our results, it seems possible that similar effects could be observed at the individual level with self-centred individuals willing to overcome their self-interest with the view to mitigating climate change if they perceive it as a significant threat.
Lending credence to this optimistic view, our findings also indicate that despite the existence of the green gap, both environmental concerns and at least some forms of pro-environmental behaviour (e.g., waste separation, passive energy saving) are widespread in society (for more information, see Supplementary material). The results could be driven by the type of PEBs we employed. We have observed that certain PEBs, such as waste sorting, some level of energy-saving or avoiding buying clothes one does not need, are frequently reported by both outwardly and self-centred oriented people. Specifically, recycling and waste avoidance were common while zero waste behaviour, upcycling clothes and vegetarian/vegan nutrition preferences were among the least popular PEBs regardless of orientation. The most distinct differences between highly self-centred and outwardly oriented individuals were observed in energy conservation. Although highly self-centred individuals reported buying efficient bulbs, this was not followed by more active commitment (e.g., turning off the light). Energy conservation allows for considerable savings in addition to any environmental benefits it brings but self-centred people seem to wish to achieve the savings with minimum effort. They may not be driven by prosocial or outward tendencies but by self-interested motivations instead. An unintended consequence of such ostensibly egoistic behaviour is an environmental benefit. This underscores the importance of motivational aspects behind the adoption of PEBs. It seems that self-centred individuals, scoring lower in prosocial tendencies and future orientation, may still be attracted by PEBs if sufficient incentives are put in place. Morally, we could praise selfless acts. From the pragmatic perspective, however, what matters is the environmental effect. If sustainability for some individuals is merely a spill-over of their self-centred motivations, then be it.
4.2 Implications for environmental action and policy
Our results indicate that increasing concerns have a considerable potential to contribute to the increase in pro-environmental behaviour both among outwardly oriented individuals and those with strong self-centred orientation. However, this also indicates that a universal strategy or policy aimed at solving the issue of the green gap is unlikely to be effective since the concerns themselves are insufficient to prompt more pro-environmental behaviour. Instead, policy-makers and environmental organisations need to acknowledge a considerable diversity among agents. The diversity could result in various people being driven by different motivations. Further research could delve deeper into the motivational aspect of involvement in PEBs. It seems likely, however, that outwardly oriented people are driven by intrinsic- while self-centred people by extrinsic motivations. This would be in line with the findings by Kahneman and Knetsch (1992) who found impure forms of altruism - particularly warm glow - to be among the dominating motives in pro-environmental behaviour. In other words, self-centred individuals could be encouraged to behave in an apparently selfless way by personal benefits, their social status or image. While outwardly oriented people could appreciate the value of their actions for the society, planet and future generations, self-centred individuals could need an additional motivation related to personal gains following socially beneficial - but personally cumbersome - behaviour. Policy-wise, that could indicate at least two paths of increasing global involvement in PEBs and bridging the green gap parallel to increasing environmental concerns: boosting the sense of social responsibility among those prone to outward orientation and stressing individual benefits for those who are self-centred. Importantly, both those paths potentially outweigh helplessness known to be a considerable drawback in fostering a more active approach to mitigating climate change.
4.3 Theoretical implications – introducing outward orientation
The study also provides first and preliminary results corroborating the existence of outward orientation as a component that could explain pro-environmental behaviour better than demographic characteristics. In our analysis, four variables - horizontal and vertical collectivism, future orientation and prosocial motivations - showed up to be interrelated, and could be meaningfully reduced to a single component capturing outward, selfless tendencies. Three other variables - horizontal and vertical individualism and immediate orientation - represented an orthogonal component of self-centred orientation that negatively moderated the relations with sustainable behaviour. Thus, the data show that both outward and self-centred orientations provide meaningful findings that could inform the debate about bridging the green gap. Whether the constructs have the potential to explain sustainable behaviour above and beyond other psychological constructs, including personality, requires further and thorough investigation. Nevertheless, it seems that outward orientation could provide a promising avenue for future research on pro-environmental behaviour and the green gap. Future research could explore the validity of these preliminary components and their relations with other forms of pro-environmental and, more broadly, prosocial behaviour.
4.4 Limitations and future directions
Although the present study involved a large, representative sample, it is cross-sectional and, thus, the results need to be interpreted with caution. First of all, it is possible that people with different personal characteristics could be prone to response bias to various extents - for instance, due to elevated image concerns or to avoid cognitive dissonance. Future research could focus on an observational or experimental approach to capture actual behaviour and its drivers to provide bias-free insights into the involvement in PEBs among various groups of individuals. However, given the fact that most data on the green gap come also from self-reports, our results seem to provide a considerable approximation of the widely investigated phenomenon. Also, future research could investigate the robustness of the findings related to outward and self-centred orientations across various cultural contexts. Specifically, to investigate the effects in cultures that are considered either strongly individualistic or collectivistic. Second, our study focused on a specific subset of private pro-environmental behaviour. Future research could extent the catalogue to more diverse PEBs such as activism. Finally, the present study did not investigate barriers - other than helplessness - that hamper changing environmental concerns into sustainable behaviour. It seems likely that individuals with different characteristics could perceive various barriers as crucial obstacles in adopting more PEBs. Together with different motivations, recognising that the barriers are perceived differently could help to formulate more efficient and targeted policies and interventions encouraging wider groups of individuals to behave sustainably.