AUTHOR=Jia Yanhui , Tian Jie , Liu Haiyue TITLE=The Roles of Mental Construal Level Theory in the Promotion of University Students' Pro-environmental Behaviors JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=12 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735837 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735837 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

Although green technological innovation is designed to combat climate change, recent research suggests that increased attention to technological innovations might decrease climate change risk perception and reduce pro-environmental behaviors due to the feeling of being assured, which is referred to as risk compensation behavior. Although there has been a growing interest in reducing the risk compensation effect related to climate change, the academic literature in this area is very limited. In this study, we propose a psychological intervention to mitigate a sample of university students' (N = 1,500) irrational response to green technological innovation so as to promote their pro-environmental behaviors. Our experiments identify students' mental construal level as an important psychological factor that, when combined with a proper message framing strategy of introducing new green technologies, can remedy their irrational response to new green technologies. Our findings suggest that highlighting the new technology as playing a preventive/promotional role related to climate change can mitigate risk compensation behavior and eventually promote students' pro-environmental behaviors when they are at a high/low mental construal level.