Exploring the Rise of Eco/Green Psychology Concepts in Understanding Sustainable Action

Psychology is a core discipline in understanding why and how individuals choose to engage in sustainable action. This paper uses social representations theory to explore the rising use of eco/green prefixes for psychology concepts through a critical analysis of the concept of eco/green fatigue. It argues that this term, which originated in the world of popular online news media, has typically been treated in academic psychology discussions using existing psychology concepts in the same way as eco-anxiety and eco-grief, which hides important features of the phenomenon that need to be better understood. The paper presents an analysis of eco-fatigue based on a critical review of the existing psychology literature, qualitative online archival analyses, and an exploratory quantitative survey study. The survey study was conducted with a sample of 182 students and non-students and analysed using principal components and cluster analysis. The paper provides evidence that simply adding an eco/green prefix to an existing psychology concept without a systematic empirical investigation into the phenomenon can result in overly simplistic conceptual frameworks that do not lead to sound practical conclusions. A preliminary empirical examination of the social representation of eco-fatigue in the public arena suggested that inappropriate sustainability messaging and bad business behaviour may be more of a barrier to sustainability action than the beliefs or attitudes held by individuals.