Protection Motivation Theory as an Explanatory Framework for Proenvironmental Behavioral Intentions

Abstract

Environmental issues have become important topics in the 21st century. Communication practitioners and scholars struggle with effectively communicating the threat of climate change and other changes to the natural world, partially due to the lack of concern by the general public. We present Protection Motivation Theory as a framework for explaining proenvironmental behavioral intentions among a college sample. Participants (N = 607) responded to an online survey, and the results indicate support for the proposed model, with severity (H1), vulnerability (H2), response efficacy (H3), and self-efficacy (H4) positively predicting proenvironmental behavioral intentions and response costs (H5) negatively predicting intentions. Implications for practitioners and scholars are discussed, and areas of future exploration in this domain are identified.

Keywords:

• Behavioral Intentions
• Proenvironmental
• Protection Motivation Theory
• Risk Perception

Notes

[1] During the review process, our analyses were rerun using z-scores for our predictor variables, at the request of a reviewer—due to slightly inflated VIF scores and two high correlations between IVs. Using the z-scores did not change our outcome model results but did lower our multicolinearity diagnostics to acceptable levels for the predictors in question.