How Green Sentiment Promotes Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Roles of Green Commitment and Empathic Ability

This research explores the ways in which people’s feelings about the environment (green sentiment) impact how they behave toward it (pro-environmental behavior) and looks into two additional factors that might influence these relationships: green commitment and empathic ability (both as mediating and moderating influences). The theoretical framework of Affective Events Theory suggests that our emotions affect our behaviors through both direct and indirect pathways of development through attitudes towards a situation. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 220 respondents from Chongqing, China, and analyses were completed using SPSS and Mplus to test the moderated mediation model. The results support a positive relationship between green sentiment and pro-environmental behavior; that is, when someone feels good about the environment, they are more likely to act in ways that demonstrate their concern about it. In addition, green commitment also impacts pro-environmental behavior and serves as a mediator between green sentiment and pro-environmental behaviors. Finally, empathic ability moderates the relationship between green sentiment and green commitment and strengthens the effect at an increasing degree of empathic ability. The indirect effect of green sentiment on pro-environmental behavior through green commitment was stronger when empathic ability was high. The results provide insight into how emotional aspects affect pro-environmental behaviours and help define the emotional pathway and boundary of empathic ability within the literature.