Pro-Environmental Behavior Predicted by Media Exposure, SNS Involvement, and Cognitive and Normative Factors

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the effect of media exposure and social networking sites (SNS) involvement on environmental concern and perceived personal responsibility to the environment and the consequent behaviors. It also tests the mediator and moderator between environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior. The results show that media exposure to environmental-related messages positively predicts environmental concern and perceived personal responsibility, while SNS involvement shows a negative effect on environmental concern and positive influence on perceived personal responsibility. Perceived personal responsibility mediates the relationship between environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior. Subjective norm weakens the effect of environmental concern on both behavioral intention and actual behavior. Self-efficacy and collective efficacy do not moderate the effect of environmental concern on behavior intention, while collective efficacy weakly moderates the effect on actual behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Media exposure
• SNS involvement
• environmental protection
• norm-activation theory
• survey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee: [grant number 11405914].