When do values promote pro-environmental behaviors? Multilevel evidence on the self-expression hypothesis

Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (xxxx) xxxx

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When do values promote pro-environmental behaviors? Multilevel evidence on the self-expression hypothesis Hoi-Wing Chana,b a b

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Handling editor: Taciano Lemos Milfont

Research has suggested that values favoring the interest of the collective over that of the individual promote proenvironmental behaviors. However, it is also well-documented that people do not always act according to their values; the strength of the association between values and behaviors depends on sociocultural contexts. The present investigation examines under what sociocultural contexts the association between self-transcendence values/self-enhancement values and pro-environmental behaviors would be stronger or weaker. In contexts with a stronger emphasis on self-expression, individuals should be more ready to base their behavioral decisions on personal values. In contexts that restrict self-expression, individuals should be less likely to do so. Accordingly, I posit that the strength of association between values and pro-environmental behaviors depends on how much the societal contexts encourage self-expression. With two international data sets (World Values Survey 5 and 6), I found supporting evidence to this hypothesized account. Findings from multilevel analyses revealed that the selftranscendence values/self-enhancement-pro-environmental behaviors association was weaker among societies with higher levels of cultural and socio-ecological restrictiveness (e.g., lower self-expression values and economic development). These findings not only elucidate when values would promote or deter pro-environmental behaviors but also highlight the need to consider a person-context interaction in understanding how personal factors are translated into pro-environmental behaviors.

Keywords: Self-transcendence values Self-enhancement values Pro-environmental behavior Self-expression Cross-national variation

1. Introduction People often differ in their amount of effort in protecting the environment. Researchers have proposed that personal values can explain people's pro-environmental actions (or lack thereof) (e.g., de Groot & Steg, 2008; Schultz & Zelezny, 1999), in which these actions are more aligned with values that emphasize the welfare of the collective (e.g., selftranscendence values; Schultz et al., 2005) and nature (e.g., biospheric value; de Groot & Steg, 2008). However, studies have also revealed that people do not always act according to their values (e.g., Lӧ;nnqvist, Leikas, Paunonen, Nissinen, & Verkasalo 2006). People may fail to take pro-environmental actions, even though they endorse pro-environmental value. It thus poses the question as to under what circumstances personal values would promote pro-environmental behaviors. The present investigation adopts a person-context interaction approach to answer this question. I contend that individuals' engagement in pro-environmental behaviors is an expression of personal values (Bardi & Schwartz, 2003). However, individuals are not always free to express themselves; self-expression depends on societal contexts (Chan, Pong, & Tam, 2019). Accordingly, I propose that the association

between personal values and pro-environmental behaviors would depend on how much the societal context allows individuals to freely express their values. I hypothesize that the values-behaviors association is stronger in contexts wherein self-expression is encouraged. With two international survey datasets, I found supporting evidence for this hypothesis. These findings elucidate when individuals’ values would guide their pro-environmental behaviors and highlight the significance of considering sociocultural contexts in the study of the relationship between values and environment-related constructs. In the following, I first review the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors and then introduce the self-expression hypothesis. 1.1. The values-behaviors association Values are trans-situational goals that guide people's evaluation of entities (e.g., person, object, social events) and selection of behaviors (Rohan, 2000; Schwartz, 1992). In the quest for universal human values, Schwartz (1992, 1994) identified two major dimensions of value types: Self-transcendence versus self-enhancement and openness to change versus conservation. The first dimension concerns the conflict between

E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101361 Received 30 September 2018; Received in revised form 26 September 2019; Accepted 8 October 2019 0272-4944/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Hoi-Wing Chan, Journal of Environmental Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101361

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collective welfare and personal interest. Self-transcendence values refer to individuals' striving for promoting the welfare of others, the equality of in-group and outgroup people, and the protection of the natural environment, whereas self-enhancement values refer to individuals' pursuit of power and personal achievement. The second dimension concerns the conflict between independence and obedience. Openness-to-change values refer to individuals' emphasis on novelty and self-direction, whereas conservation values refer to their emphasis on maintaining social order, following traditions, and seeking stability. These two dimensions of value types have been validated in more than 80 cultural groups with diverse samples and measures (Schwartz, 2012). Empirical findings also support the robustness of these four types of values in explaining human behaviors in various domains (e.g., consumer behavior, political orientation, and voting; for a review, see Roccas & Sagiv, 2010). In the study of pro-environmental behavior, researchers have primarily focused on the self-transcendence versus self-enhancement dimension (e.g., Schultz et al., 2005). Self-transcendence values inherently involve individuals’ emphasis on the welfare of the natural environment (Dietz, Fitzgerald, & Shwom, 2005). Further, as environmental protection often involves the sacrifice of immediate personal interest for the long-term benefit of the collective, pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors are more aligned with self-transcendence values than with self-enhancement values (Stern, Dietz, & Kalof, 1993). For example, participation in a pro-environmental campaign often offers no direct benefit to an individual (see Stern, 2000). Studies have found empirical support to the positive association between self-transcendence values and pro-environmental behaviors and the negative association between self-enhancement values and pro-environmental behaviors (e.g., Karp, 1996; Milfont, Sibley, & Duckitt, 2010; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002; Schultz et al., 2005). For example, Barber, Bishop, and Gruen (2014) found that participants who strongly endorsed selftranscendence (self-enhancement) values were more (less) willing to spend money on pro-environmental goods. Researchers also commonly agree that values, on average, have a weak effect on pro-environmental behaviors (e.g., Schultz et al., 2005). Personal values are not the only determinant of pro-environmental behaviors. Social and situational factors (e.g., social norms, structural constraints) are also influential (Gifford, 2011; Steg & Vlek, 2009). When individuals consider these sets of factors to be more important than their values, they may base their behavioral decision on these factors instead (see Roccas & Sagiv, 2010). For example, based on four studies, Klöckner (2013) reported that the pooled correlation between self-transcendence values and pro-environmental behaviors was only 0.06 (ranging from -.05 to .17), and the pooled correlation between self-enhancement values and pro-environmental behaviors was only 0.01 (ranging from -.05 to .07). Why do values sometimes have a weaker influence on behaviors? Although values are guiding principles of people's life, people do not always consider these principles to be relevant to a situation (Maio, 2010). Values should have a weaker influence on people's behaviors when individuals consider it to be irrelevant. For example, while some people may apply the equality principle to evaluate gender equality, they may not apply the same principle to understand the equality related to handedness (Maio, Hahn, Frost, & Cheung, 2009). When individuals do not consider their values to be relevant, they may bypass the value principles when deciding how to behave. This relevance of personal values is related to context. For example, in an experimental study, De Kwaadsteniet, van Dijk, Wit, and de Cremer (2006) demonstrated how the values-behaviors association differs across contexts. They found that participants based their decisions in a resource dilemma game on their values when the size of resources was unknown; however, when participants were certain about the size of resources, they applied the equal division rule regardless of their values. The consensual social rule makes individuals to deem their values less relevant in behavioral decision. Together, these findings illustrate that people do not always behave according to their values. The influence of context on the values-behaviors association suggest

that the influence of self-transcendence/self-enhancement values on proenvironmental behaviors may vary across sociocultural contexts. In a cross-cultural study that involves four countries, Katz-Gerro, Greenspan, Handy, and Lee (2017) found the strength of the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors varies across countries and types of behaviors. Milfont and Markowitz (2016) also found a cross-national variation in the values-behaviors association; there was a stronger association among countries with higher levels of human development. To date, few studies have systematically explained this cross-cultural variation. Cross-cultural studies have revealed that the behavioral influence of values often depends on specific cultural contexts (Boer & Fischer, 2013; Roccas & Sagiv, 2010); however, in the study of pro-environmental behaviors, most of the past studies often involved only samples from Western cultures (Bain et al., 2016; Tam & Chan, 2017). Further, in the studies that involved more than one society, the focus was often on the crosscultural similarities (and therefore, generalizability) of the findings (e.g., Schultz et al., 2005; Schultz & Zelezny, 1999). Together, while these studies offer significant insights into the importance of values, they offer limited insights into understanding the potential impact of social and cultural contexts on the behavioral influence of values. Accordingly, how these contexts would influence the extent to which self-transcendence values and self-enhancement values are translated into pro-environmental behaviors remains to be an open question. 1.2. The self-expression hypothesis Under what contexts would individuals refer to their self-transcendence or self-enhancement values in making an environmental decision? The present investigation answers this question by adopting a person-context interaction approach. This approach proposes that human behavior is determined not only by individuals’ internal attributes (e.g., personal values) but also by what the broader sociocultural context allows them to do (i.e., affordance). It is therefore reasonable to expect that the association between self-transcendence values/self-enhancement values and pro-environmental behaviors would vary across sociocultural contexts. People engage in value-consistent behaviors as a way to express themselves (e.g., Bardi & Schwartz, 2003), which helps maintain selfconsistency and facilitate the attainment of important values (Roccas & Sagiv, 2010; Rokeach, 1973). Individuals are not always encouraged to express oneself; the self-expression depends on the affordance in the societal contexts (Fischer & Boer, 2015). Some sociocultural contexts are more restrictive, in which people are encouraged to follow social norms and regulations rather than to express oneself (Chan et al., 2019). When self-expression is downplayed, personal values will become less relevant to construing and understanding a situation. When personal values are deemed to be of low relevance, individuals will rely on other factors in behavioral decisions (e.g., social norms). Accordingly, the relevance of personal values would be lower under these restrictive contexts, while the relevance of external factors (e.g., social norms, assigned roles) would be higher. Consequently, individuals are more likely to bypass their values when making decisions; thus, it results in a weaker association between values and behaviors. Following this logic, I contend that the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors would depend on the level of restrictiveness of the sociocultural contexts on self-expression. I refer to this account as the self-expression hypothesis. Based on cross-cultural psychology studies (e.g., Kim & Markus, 1999; Suh, 2002), some cultures prioritize context dependence (e.g., collectivism) over personal agency (e.g., individualism). In these cultural contexts, people are deemed to adjust themselves according to social and contextual cues, while expressing one's values can be regarded as immature and inappropriate (Markus & Kitayama, 1994). For example, people in collectivistic cultures are more likely to view the inconsistency of oneself across situations as a sign of maturity (Suh, 2002). They also exhibit more tolerance of the inconsistency between values and behaviors and are more flexible to adjust their behaviors according to situational cues (e.g., social norms; Kashima, Siegal, 2

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Tanaka, & Kashima, 1992). Consequently, personal values are deemed less relevant to how one should behave in a situation. In societies that emphasize context dependence, there should be a weaker influence of values on people's attitudes and behaviors. In contrast, in societies that emphasize personal agency, individuals should more readily base their behaviors on personal values. Findings from past studies support this notion. For example, Kim and Sherman (2007) found that when making a decision, participants from individualistic cultures exhibited a stronger emphasis on expressing oneself than participants from collectivistic cultures did. Similarly, in a 31-country meta-analysis, Boer and Fischer (2013) found that the association between values and social attitudes was weaker in societies that emphasized norm validation and collectivism. Accordingly, I expect that the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors be weaker in societies that emphasize context dependence over personal agency. The socio-ecological perspective offers another theoretical angle to the cross-cultural differences in the emphasis on self-expression (Oishi, 2014). This perspective posits that individuals construct and adopt strategies that enable them to cope with challenges posed by socioeconomic and physical contexts. Accordingly, the extent to which one can freely express oneself is also related to the social ecology of society. A social ecology may reduce the relevance of personal values when staying with a large group is the optimal strategy for one to survive (Welzel & Inglehart, 2010; Yamagishi, Hashimoto, Li, & Schug, 2012). For example, under economic scarcity, staying with a large group can enhance people's chances to thrive, because a large group often has more social and economic resources (Welzel & Inglehart, 2010). Instead of expressing oneself, compliance with norms and social regulations can lower individuals' risks of being ostracized from the group and thereby enhance their chances to stay with the in-group (Welzel & Inglehart, 2010). Furthermore, the emphasis of in-group cohesion may create a stronger concern about social monitoring, in which individuals may pay more attention to others' evaluations and judgments. Accordingly, it is crucial for them to adjust oneself according to social expectation. The urban versus non-urban living exemplifies such social and economic constraints, given that non-urban regions often have lowered level of economic development and emphasized tight-knit social relationship. Yamagishi et al. (2012) found supportive evidence of this notion. They found that participants living in non-urbanized regions were less likely to choose a gift based on their personal preference than participants living in more urbanized regions were. Instead, these participants were more likely to choose a gift based on the majority rule. Social information shared by the group also serves as guidance for how people could cope with ecological threats. Studies have identified two types of such threats. The first type is the threat of infectious disease. When there is an outbreak of infectious disease, the risk of being infected is lowered if one stays with their in-group and follows the safety practices of the group, given that the sanity of the ingroup is assumed (Schaller, 2016). Supporting this view, cross-cultural studies have found that societies with a higher prevalence of infectious diseases exhibit a stronger emphasis on norm compliance (e.g., Gelfand et al., 2011; Murray, Trudeau, & Schaller, 2011). The second type is the thermal climate. Under harsh thermal climates, social information can serve as a useful tool for people to make good use of the limited time and resource. Instead of experimenting a novel way to thrive, people tend to follow the successful and safety practices of their fellow members. It is noteworthy that climatic demand does not necessarily come with economic and resource scarcity (Van de Vliert, 2009). For example, Nordic countries are rich and developed, despite having more demanding climate. According to the climato-economic theory (Van de Vliert, 2009, 2011), when there are plenty of resources, individuals do not need to stay with the group to thrive, and thus, enjoy more freedom to make decisions based on their values. Accordingly, the impact of climatic demand on self-expression would also depend on the availability of national resources to cope with the threat. Supporting this notion, Van de Vliert (2013) found that participants enjoyed more freedom in richer and harsher thermal climates.

Together, based on the socio-ecological perspective, I contend that selfexpression is deemed to be less desirable in societies with higher levels of socio-economic constraints and ecological threats. Accordingly, I expect that the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors be weaker in societies with higher levels of socio-economic constraints and higher levels of ecological threats. 1.3. Overview of the present research This study adopts a person-context interaction approach to understand the association between self-transcendence values/self-enhancement values and pro-environmental behaviors. More specifically, I contend that individuals sometimes do not rely on their values as guidance of their behaviors; it depends on how much the sociocultural contexts allow them to express oneself freely. When self-expression is restricted, the relevance of personal values in behavioral decision is low. Consequently, personal values would have a weaker influence on behaviors. I refer to this proposition as the self-expression hypothesis. Based on cross-cultural psychology, I hypothesize that in societies with a lower cultural emphasis on personal agency, there is a weaker association between self-transcendence values/self-enhancement values and pro-environmental behaviors (Hypothesis 1). Based on the socio-ecological perspectives, I hypothesize that in societies with higher levels of economic constraints and higher levels of ecological threats, there is also a weaker association between these values and pro-environmental behaviors (Hypotheses 2 and 3). Furthermore, based on the climato-economic theory (Van de Vliert, 2009), I also explore whether climatic demand and economic resource jointly influence the association between the two types of values and proenvironmental behaviors. That is, I also test a climatic demand X economic resource X values three way interaction. To examine this hypothesis, I conducted two sets of multilevel analyses on datasets from the fifth wave (WVS-5) and sixth wave (WVS6) of the World Value Survey. Both datasets contained standardized measures of individual-level self-transcendence values, self-enhancement values, and pro-environmental behaviors across many societies. I also obtained the societal-level data from cross-cultural psychology studies (e.g., Boer & Fischer, 2013; Gelfand et al., 2011), with all indicators being widely used in the literature. 2. Study 1 (WVS-5) 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Individual-level data I adopted the individual-level data from the fifth wave of the World Value Survey (WVS-5; Inglehart et al., 2014a). The survey was administrated from 2005 to 2009. It consisted of 83,975 adult participants (aged 16 years and above) from 58 countries. In most countries, a nationally representative sample was used. 2.1.1.1. Self-transcendence values and self-enhancement values. In this survey, personal values were measured by the modified Portrait Value Questionnaire. This questionnaire consisted of ten items, with each item representing a value-domain of the ten Schwartz's values. For each item, participants responded on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all like me to 7 = very much like me). Each type of values was computed based on the conceptual categorization of the value domain (see Malka, Soto, Inzlicht, & Lelkes, 2014). Self-transcendence values were measured by items that captured benevolence (“It is important to this person to do something for the good of society”) and universalism (“Looking after the environment is important to this person”). Self-enhancement values were measured by items that captured power (“It is important to this person to be rich; to have a lot of money and expensive things”) and achievement (“Being very successful is important to this person; to have people recognize one's achievements”). I followed Schwartz (1992)'s guideline to control for individual difference in scale use bias. More specifically, I first 3

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computed an average score of all ten items for each participant. Next, I centered the score of each value item by this average score within a participant. I then computed the scores of self-transcendence values (Cronbach's α = 0.56) and self-enhancement values (Cronbach's α = 0.54) by averaging the items identified earlier.

(World Bank, 2017a; 2017b). These two indexes represented the levels of socio-economic development of a society, with higher values indicating better development. In other words, individuals would experience stronger socio-economic constraints in societies with a lower percentage of urban population and smaller GDP per capita.

2.1.1.2. Pro-environmental behaviors. I identified two items that measured individuals' willingness to pay for environmental protection (“I would give part of my income if I were certain that the money would be used to prevent environmental pollution” and “I would agree to increase in taxes if the extra money were used to prevent environmental pollution”). Although willingness to pay only represents people's intention to engage in environmental protection, past studies have considered willingness to pay to be a proxy of pro-environmental behaviors (e.g., Eom, Kim, Sherman, & Ishii, 2016). Participants responded on a 4-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree). I computed an average score based on the two items (Cronbach's α = 0.79), with higher scores representing stronger willingness to pay for environmental protection.

2.1.2.3. Ecological threats. I identified two indices on ecological threats based on past studies: climatic demand and prevalence of infectious diseases. The index on climatic demand was adopted from Van de Vliert (2011), which measured the extent to which the temperature in a society deviated from an optimal comfortable temperature. This index thus represented the harshness of the societal thermal climate, with higher scores representing stronger climatic demand. I obtained an indicator of the prevalence of infectious disease from past studies (e.g., Boer & Fischer, 2013). This indicator was developed by Fincher and Thornhill (2012). It measured the prevalence of human communicable infectious diseases as defined by the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network Database, and the lost years of healthy life owing to the burdens of such diseases as reported by the World Health Organization. A higher score of this index represented a more prevalence of the infectious disease. These two indicators have often been used in past studies to represent threats in the ecological context (e.g., Boer & Fischer, 2013).

2.1.1.3. Individual-level covariates. Participants reported their gender (1 = male and 0 = female), age (in years), the highest level of education attained (1 = “No formal education” to 9 = “University-level education, with degree”), and household income. More specifically, household income was measured regarding individuals’ perception of their household income level in the society (1 = lowest group to 10 = highest group).

2.2. Results and discussion It is noteworthy that a prerequisite for conducting any cross-cultural comparison is to verify the measurement invariance of all individual-level constructs across cultural samples (Milfont & Fischer, 2010). There are three levels of invariance: configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance. Configural invariance refers to the invariance of factor structure across cultural samples; metric invariance refers to the invariance of both factor structure and factor loadings across cultural samples; scalar invariance refers to the invariance of factor structure, factor loadings, and intercepts across cultural samples. These three levels of invariance can be examined by conducting a series of multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) by constraining factor loadings and intercepts to be equal across cultural samples. To ensure the validity of cross-cultural comparisons, metric invariance at least should be obtained. However, CFA requires at least three items (or indicators) for the model to be just identified. Given that self-transcendence values, self-enhancement values, and willingness to pay for environmental protection each contained only two items, CFA models could not be constructed for these variables. As the measure did not fulfill the basic requirement for conducting a measurement invariance test, findings regarding cross-cultural comparisons need to be interpreted with caution. As the observations were nested within each society, I conducted a series of multilevel analyses, with willingness to pay for environmental protection as the outcome variable. At the individual-level (Level-1), I included self-transcendence values/self-enhancement values as the Level1 predictor variable, and gender, age, education level, and household income as the Level-1 covariates. All Level-1 predictor variables were centered-by-the-mean within each society, except for gender. At the societal-level (Level-2), I included each societal-level variable as the predictor of the intercept of willingness to pay for environmental protection and the predictor of the slope of self-transcendence values and self-enhancement values. Given that the societal-level variables were measured in a different scale, I standardized each of these variables across societies. Table 1 shows the zero-order correlation among the societal-level variables.1 The equations of the model were as follow.

2.1.2. Societal-level data 2.1.2.1. Emphasis on personal agency. Two societal-level indices measured the extent to which a society promoted personal agency. The first index was Hofstede's individualism-collectivism (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010), with higher scores representing higher levels of individualism in society. Individualism refers to an emphasis on personal goals and loosely-knit group, whereas collectivism refers to an emphasis on collective goals, tightly-knit group relation, and context dependence (Hofstede et al., 2010; Triandis, 1989). The higher score of this index (i.e., individualism) thus represented a stronger emphasis on personal agency. The second index was self-expression values (also known as the “emancipative values”; Welzel, 2010; Welzel & Inglehart, 2010), with higher scores represented higher levels of self-expression values in a society. Self-expression values indicated the extent to which a society allowed individuals to prioritize striving for personal agency over obeying authority. Similar to Hofstede et al. (2010), Welzel and Inglehart (2010) suggested that self-expression values describe the characteristic of a society rather than an individual, even though these values are aggregate of individuals' responses within a society. Accordingly, in this study, I considered self-expression values to be a societal-level indicator rather than an individual-level variable. Higher levels of self-expression values in a society represented a stronger emphasis on personal agency. 2.1.2.2. Socio-economic constraints. Socio-economic constraints were measured by the percentage of urban population and the GDP per capita. It is noteworthy that people living in non-urbanized areas face more socio-economic constraints than their urban counterparts do. In non-urbanized areas, individuals often have less economic resources and more tight-knit interpersonal relationships, which impose a stronger constraint on individuals' pursuit of personal agency. Past studies have compared participants living in non-urbanized regions and those living in urbanized regions (e.g., Yamagishi et al., 2012). In this study, I adopted the percentage of urban population as a proxy to measure the extent to which a country is urbanized. Similarly, past studies have also found that economic development (operationalized as GDP per capita) represents a significant determinant in people's pursuit of personal interest (e.g., Chan et al., 2019). I adopted the 2005 data from the World Bank database

1

Information regarding the partial correlations between self-transcendence values/self-enhancement values and pro-environmental behavior variables in each country were presented in Supplementary Table S1 and Table S2 for Study 1 and Study 2 respectively. Table S1 and Table S2 also display the standardized scores of each societal-level variable in each country. 4

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(downplayed) personal agency. Consistent with Hypothesis 2, the selftranscendence values X GDP per capita was positive and significant, indicating a stronger (weaker) association between self-transcendence values and willingness to pay for environmental protection in societies with more (less) economic resources. Unexpectedly, the self-transcendence values X urban population was positive but non-significant. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was only partially supported. Consistent with Hypothesis 3, the self-transcendence values X prevalence of infectious disease was negative and significant, indicating a weaker association between selftranscendence values and willingness to pay for environmental protection in societies with more prevalence of infectious disease. Unexpectedly, the self-transcendence values X climatic demand interaction was positive and significant, indicating a stronger association between self-transcendence values and willingness to pay for environmental protection in societies with harsher thermal climate.2 Based on the climato-economic theory (Van de Vliert, 2009, 2011), I further examined the self-transcendence values X climatic demand X GDP per capita three-way interaction.4 Table 3 shows the results. The selftranscendence values X climatic demand remained positive and significant, whereas the self-transcendence values X GDP per capita became non-significant. More importantly, the three-way interaction was positive and significant, indicating that the self-transcendence valueswillingness to pay association was stronger among wealthier societies with higher levels of climatic demand. It indicates that climatic demand even encourages individuals to express oneself when there are abundant resources. It appears that ecological challenges (i.e., pathogen threats and climatic demand) might influence the expression of personal values differently.2,3 Next, I conducted another series of multilevel analysis with selfenhancement values as the predictor variable. Tables 2 and 3 show the results. Self-enhancement values was a negative and significant predictor of willingness to pay. The self-enhancement values X individualism-collectivism interaction was negative and significant, indicating a stronger (weaker) association between self-enhancement values and willingness to pay for environmental protection in societies with higher (lower) levels of individualism. However, all other cross-level interactions were non-significant.2,4 It indicated that the association between self-enhancement values and willingness to pay

Table 1 Zero-order correlations among societal-level variables.

Study 1 1. Individualismcollectivism 2. Self-expression values 3. Percentage of urban population 4. GDP per capita 5. Climatic demand 6. Prevalence of infectious disease Study 2 1. Individualismcollectivism 2. Self-expression values 3. Percentage of urban population 4. GDP per capita 5. Climatic demand 6. Prevalence of infectious disease

Note.

a

p = .070.

b

1

2

3

4

5

6

r N r N r N r N r N r N

– – .60*** 31 .49*** 32 .68*** 32 .58*** 33 -.61*** 32

– – .65*** 42 .77*** 42 .57*** 43 -.73*** 42

– – .76*** 45 .43** 45 -.64*** 45

– – .53*** 45 -.78*** 45

– – -.76*** 45

– –

r N r N r N r N r N r N

– – .62*** 34 .32a 33 .55** 33 .48** 34 -.65*** 32

– – .45*** 57 .67*** 57 .24b 58 -.46*** 56

– – .74*** 57 .05 57 -.42** 56

– – .18 57 -.61*** 56

– – -.62*** 56

– –

p = .067. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Level 1 (Individual level): WTPij = β0j + β1j (Self-transcendence values/Self-enhancement values) + β2 (gender) + β3 (age) + β4 (education) + β5 (income) + rij (1) Level 2 (Societal level): β0j = γ00 + γ01 (societal-level factor) + u0j

(2)

β1j = γ10 + γ11 (societal-level factor) + u1j

(3)

In equation (1), WTPij refers to the score of willingness to pay for environmental protection for the individual i in society j. β0j refers to the intercept of WTP for society j. β1j refers to the slope of selftranscendence values/self-enhancement values for society j. β2-5 refers to the slope of individual-level covariates. In equation (2), γ00 is the grand intercept (indicating the grand mean of WTP), and γ01 is the slope of the societal-level variable (indicating its main effect on WTP). In equation (3), γ10 is the grand slope (indicating the main effect of self-transcendence values/self-enhancement values on WTP), and γ11 is the slope of the societal-level variable (indicating the hypothesized cross-level interaction). Among the three equations, rij, and u0j and u1j are the residual variance at the individual-level and societal-level respectively. In brief, the key estimate of interest is γ11, which indicate whether or not the slope of self-transcendence values/ self-enhancement values depends on the societal-level cultural and socio-ecological factors. I first conducted a series of multilevel analysis with self-transcendence values as the main level-1 predictor variable. Tables 2 and 3 show the results. Self-transcendence values was a positive and significant predictor of willingness to pay. Consistent with Hypothesis 1, the self-transcendence values X individualism-collectivism was positive and significant, and self-transcendence values X self-expression values was positive and significant. These findings suggest that the association between self-transcendence values and willingness to pay for environmental protection was stronger (weaker) in societies that emphasized

2

See the supplementary materials for the detailed results of the multilevel models and the follow-up simple slope analysis (Tables S3–S10). 3 Because the universalism value refers to the importance of environmental protection, additional analyses have been conducted to delineate the effect of benevolence value from this environmental protection-oriented value. I conducted a similar set of multilevel analysis with the two values included simultaneously as the individual-level predictor variables. Tables S11–S13 display the results of the analyses. For universalism value, the results were consistent with the main findings in Study 1 (willingness to pay as the outcome variable) and Study 2 (public-sphere behavior as the outcome variable). For benevolence value, the results were consistent with the main findings in Study 2 but not in Study 1. It appears that benevolence value was less susceptible to the influence of the societal-level constraints than universalism value. It may be that the self-expression process is more pronounced for values that are more readily linked with behaviors (e.g., in the same domain). It may also be that benevolence is a general virtue relevant to most of the situations. Nevertheless, the current analysis measured each value with one item, which might not fully capture the meaning of this value. Interpretation of the findings thus need to be cautious, and future studies are warranted to understand the differences observed here fully. 4 There was a high correlation between GDP per capita and climatic demand in Study 1. Checking the multicollinearity statistics was thus necessary. For all of the models that involved both GDP and climatic demand (in both Study 1 and Study 2), I computed the multilevel variance inflation factors (MVIFs) based on Clark's (2013) method. All of the MVIFs ranged from 1.010 to 1.483, which were well below the threshold of 5.00. This observation indicates that including the two societal-level variables and their interaction terms in the same model did not yield a multicollinearity problem. 5

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3. Study 2 (WVS-6)

Table 2 Estimated results of the multilevel model with WVS 5. ST/SE values:

Self-transcendence values

Self-enhancement values

Model

Model 1

Model 2

Coeff (SE)

Coeff (SE)

2.668*** (.040) .155*** (.012) .020** (.006) -.001* (.000) .032*** (.002) .028*** (.002)

2.675*** (.040) -.078*** (.008) .008 (.006) .000 (.000) .034*** (.002) .026*** (.002)

.516 (.003) .073*** (.015)

.526 (.003) .073*** (.015)

.006*** (.001)

.002*** (.001)

54,294 45 −59242.850

54,294 45 −59733.404

Level-1 – individual level Intercept (γ00) ST/SE values (γ10) Gender (β2) Age (β3) Education (β4) Income (β5) Residual variance Level 1 variance (rij) Level 2 variance of intercept (u0j) Level 2 variance of slope of ST/SE values (u1j) Number of individuals Number of countries Log likelihood

3.1. Method 3.1.1. Individual-level data I adopted the individual-level data from the sixth-wave of the World Value Survey (WVS-6; Inglehart et al., 2014b). The survey was administrated from 2010 to 2014. It consisted of 90,360 adult participants (aged 16 years and above) from 60 countries. In most countries, a nationally representative sample was used. 3.1.1.1. Self-transcendence values and self-enhancement values. I identified the same value measure as Study 1. I computed the scores of each type of values by first centering each value item by the mean within a participant and then averaging items in each value type. A higher score represented higher levels of self-transcendence values (Cronbach's α = 0.64) and self-enhancement values (Cronbach's α = 0.50). 3.1.1.2. Pro-environmental behaviors. I identified three items that measured individuals' participation in public-sphere proenvironmental behaviors based on past studies (e.g., Tam & Chan, 2018). More specifically, participants indicated whether or not they had given money to an ecological organization and participated in a demonstration for some environmental cause in the past two years. In addition, they also indicated whether or not they were a member of an environmental organization. I computed a sum score based on these three items (ranged from 0 to 3; Cronbach's α = 0.46), with higher scores representing more engagement in public-sphere proenvironmental behaviors. Despite the relatively low Cronbach's alphas for the measure, past studies have demonstrated that it is a valid measure of respondents' public-sphere pro-environmental behavior (e.g., Tam & Chan, 2018). Furthermore, the exploratory factor analysis on the items' tetrachoric correlation matrix and the confirmatory factor analysis both revealed that the measure is unidimensional. Altogether, they support the use of these items to measure public-sphere pro-environmental behavior.

Note. ST/SE values = Self-transcendence values/Self-enhancement values. *p < .05; ***p < .001.

for environmental protection did not depend on other societal-level variables.5 In summary, the findings offer some support to the self-expression hypothesis. I found that the association between self-transcendence values and willingness to pay for environmental protection was weaker in societal contexts with weaker emphasis on self-expression (low individualism, low self-expression values, low economic prosperity, and high prevalence of infectious disease). Yet, the findings on self-enhancement values appear not supporting this notion, in which all crosslevel interactions were not significant, except for individualism-collectivism. It is noteworthy that willingness to pay for environmental protection is just a proxy of whether or not individuals engage in environmental protection, as this construct only measured individuals' intention to support environmental protection. As intention is not necessarily consistent with behavior, it is crucial to test the hypotheses with a measure on pro-environmental behaviors. Furthermore, the mixed findings of Hypothesis 3 warrant replications. To address these issues, I conducted Study 2 by using data from the sixth-wave of the World Value Survey (WVS-6; Inglehart et al., 2014b). This dataset included a self-report measure of individuals’ pro-environmental behavior in the public-sphere (e.g., signing a petition, donating money to an environmental organization; Stern, 2000).

3.1.1.3. Individual-level covariates. I identified the same set of individual-level covariates as in Study 1. They were gender, age, the highest level of education attained, and household income. 3.1.2. Societal-level data 3.1.2.1. Emphasis on personal agency. Same as Study 1, emphasis on personal agency was measured by Hofstede's individualism-collectivism (Hofstede et al., 2010) and self-expression values (Welzel & Inglehart, 2010). As the score on self-expression values was updated by Inglehart et al. (2014b) in WVS-6, I adopted this updated score in Study 2. Higher levels of individualism and self-expression values in a society represented a stronger emphasis on personal agency. 3.1.2.2. Socio-economic constraints. Same as Study 1, socio-economic constraints were measured by the percentage of urban population and the GDP per capita. I adopted the 2010 data from the World Bank database (World Bank, 2017a; 2017b), with lower values indicating stronger socio-economic constraints.

5 As the current study involved multiple comparisons, there was a risk of inflation of Type 1 Error. Using a more stringent alpha level can help reduce Type-1 Error. However, as the statistical power to detect cross-level interactions is often limited (Mathieu, Aguinis, Culpepper, & Chen, 2012), using a more stringent alpha level may increase the risk of Type 2 Error. Striking a balance in a multilevel context and with an existing dataset is particularly difficult, as the number of units at each level is beyond researchers' control. To increase the statistical power for detecting cross-level interactions, some researchers even propose to adopt a more lenient level of alpha (e.g., Cascio & Zedeck, 1983). Based on these considerations, in this investigation, I maintained the conventional alpha level, and attempted to reduce Type-1 Error by conceptually replicating the findings in two studies and using different societal-level indicators. This practice is also consistent with some past studies facing a similar research situation (e.g., Tam & Chan, 2017).

3.1.2.3. Ecological threats. The same indices on climatic demand and prevalence of infectious disease were used as in Study 1. 3.2. Results and discussion As the public-sphere pro-environmental behavior measure contained three items, it fulfilled the basic requirement of identification in a CFA model. Given that these three items were measured in a binary scale, I constructed a categorical multigroup CFA model to examine the 6

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Table 3 Estimated results of the cross-level interaction with WVS 5. ST/SE values:

Self-transcendence values

Self-enhancement values

Effect on intercept

Effect on slope of ST values

Effect on intercept

Effect on slope of SE values

Hypothesis 1 Individualism-collectivism Self-expression values

-.083a (.044) -.106** (.036)

.056*** (.012) .039*** (.011)

-.083b (.044) -.106** (.036)

-.021* (.009) -.013 (.008)

Hypothesis 2 Percentage of urban population GDP per capita

-.109** (.037) -.097** (.037)

.017 (.012) .036** (.011)

-.108* (.037) -.097** (.037)

-.007 (.008) -.012 (.008)

Hypothesis 3 Climatic demand Prevalence of infectious disease

-.083* (.038) .127*** (.036)

.037*** (.011) -.038*** (.011)

-.083* (.038) .127*** (.036)

-.012 (.008) .013 (.008)

Hypothesis 3 – supplementary Climatic demand GDP per capita Climatic demand X GDP per capita

-.041 (.043) -.080c (.043) .048 (.038)

.025* (.012) .013d (.012) .027** (.010)

-.041 (.043) -.080e (.043) .048 (.039)

-.007 (.009) -.008 (.009) -.000 (.008)

Note. ST/SE values = Self-transcendence values/Self-enhancement values. Except for the supplementary analysis of Hypothesis 4, all models included only one societal-level variable at the Level-2 equations. All models included the full lists of Level-1 variables and covariates as Table 1 a p = .061. b p = .061. c p = .061. d p = .090. e p = .062. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

metric invariance. The model fit was acceptable (χ2 = 698.912, df = 116, CFI = 0.963, TLI = 0.943, RMSEA = 0.059, 90% CI = [.054, .063], SRMR = 0.073). This finding also supports the use of the three items as a composite score, despite the low reliability. As noted in Study 1, the measurement invariance of self-transcendence values and selfenhancement values cannot be examined owing to the limited numbers of items in the survey. Table 1 shows the zero-order correlation among the societal-level variables.1 Same as Study 1, I conducted a series of multilevel analysis, with public-sphere pro-environmental behavior as the outcome variable. Again, I centered each Level-1 (individual) predictor by the mean within each country, except for gender. All Level-2 (societal) predictors were standardized to facilitate the interpretation of the effect. I first examined the association between self-transcendence values and public-sphere pro-environmental behavior. Tables 4 and 5 display the results. Consistent with Study 1, self-transcendence values was a positive and significant predictor of public-sphere behavior. Consistent with Hypotheses 1 to 3, all cross-level interactions, except for self-

transcendence values X climatic demand, were significant or marginally significant in the expected direction, suggesting that the association between self-transcendence values and public-sphere pro-environmental behavior was weaker in societies with low individualism, low self-expression values, low percentage of urban population, low GDP per capita, and high prevalence of infectious disease. I further examined whether or not the influence of climatic demand would depend on national resources (operationalized as GDP per capita). The three-way cross-level interaction was positive and significant, indicating that the association between self-transcendence values and public-sphere proenvironmental behavior was stronger in societies with more national resources and harsher thermal climate.4 The findings regarding climatic demand were consistent with those in Study 1.2,3 Next, I conducted another series of multilevel analysis to examine the association between self-enhancement values and public-sphere pro-environmental behavior. As expected, self-enhancement values was a negative and significant predictor of public-sphere behavior. Tables 4 and 5 show the findings. These findings largely replicated those reported above. All cross-level interactions were significant in the expected direction, except for the self-enhancement values X climatic demand interaction. These findings suggest that the negative association between self-enhancement values and public-sphere pro-environmental behavior was weaker among individuals in societies with lower individualism, lower self-expression values, lower percentage of urban population, lower GDP per capita, and more prevalence of infectious disease. Finally, I also examined the self-enhancement values X climatic demand X GDP per capita interaction. Consistent with the above findings, the three-way interaction was negative and significant, indicating a stronger negative association between self-enhancement values and public-sphere pro-environmental behavior in societies with a harsher climate and more national resource.4 These findings suggest that in wealthier societies, individuals would be more likely to base their behaviors on self-enhancement values when they face harsher thermal climates.2,5

Table 4 Estimated results of the multilevel model with WVS 6. ST/SE values:

Self-transcendence values

Self-enhancement values

Model

Model 1

Model 2

Coeff (SE)

Coeff (SE)

.278*** (.023) .064*** (.012) .034*** (.004) .000 (.000) .022*** (.001) .021*** (.001)

.281*** (.023) -.021** (.008) .028*** (.004) .001*** (.000) .024*** (.001) .020*** (.001)

.363 (.002) .031*** (.006)

.368 (.002) .031*** (.006)

.009*** (.002)

.003*** (.001)

78,094 59 −71478.911

78,094 59 −71984.188

Level-1 – individual level Intercept (γ00) ST/SE values (γ10) Gender (β2) Age (β3) Education (β4) Income (β5) Residual variance Level 1 variance (rij) Level 2 variance of intercept (u0j) Level 2 variance of slope of ST/SE values (u1j) Number of individuals Number of countries Log likelihood

Note. ST/SE ***p < .001.

=

Self-transcendence

values/Self-enhancement

4. General discussion In the present investigation, I propose the self-expression hypothesis to elucidate when there would be a stronger or weaker association between values and pro-environmental behaviors. This account suggests that self-transcendence values or self-enhancement values would have a weaker influence on individuals’ behaviors when the sociocultural contexts do not encourage self-expression, rendering low

values.

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Table 5 Estimated results of the cross-level interaction with WVS 6. Predictor variable:

Self-transcendence values

Self-enhancement values

Effect on intercept

Effect on slope of values

Effect on intercept

Effect on slope of values

Hypothesis 1 Individualism-collectivism Self-expression values

.021 (.029) .061** (.020)

.064*** (.013) .059*** (.008)

.023 (.029) .063** (.020)

-.036*** (.008) -.032*** (.006)

Hypothesis 2 Percentage of urban population GDP per capita

.021 (.023) .042a (.037)

.036** (.011) .048*** (.010)

.022 (.023) -.043c (.023)

-.021** (.007) -.030*** (.007)

Hypothesis 3 Climatic demand Prevalence of infectious disease

-.073*** (.021) .031 (.036)

.006 (.012) -.022b (.012)

-.073** (.021) .030 (.023)

-.012 (.008) .018* (.008)

Hypothesis 3 – supplementary Climatic demand GDP per capita Climatic demand X GDP per capita

-.080*** (.020) .060** (.021) .017 (.026)

-.001 (.009) .053*** (.010) .030** (.010)

-.080*** (.020) .062** (.021) .018 (.021)

-.009 (.006) -.031*** (.007) -.016* (.006)

Note. Except for the supplementary analysis of Hypothesis 4, all models included only one societal-level variable at the Level-2 equations. All models included the full lists of Level-1 variables and covariates as Table 4 a p = .070. b p = .076. c p = .063. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

received robust empirical support for both type of values (for a metaanalysis, see Klöckner, 2013). The present investigation offers an alterantive interpretation regarding the lack of association between values and pro-environmental behaviors. I contend that individuals sometimes do not base their proenvironmental behaviors on self-transcendence values and self-enhancement values, especially when context-dependence (e.g., fitting into ingroup, obeying to authorities) is deemed to be more desirable and applicable than expressing oneself in society. The present findings offer support to this account. These findings are also consistent with recent studies in understanding the environmental concern-behavior gap (e.g., Eom et al., 2016; Tam & Chan, 2017), which revealed that environmental concern was less predictive of pro-environmental behaviors in societies with lower individualism. Together, these findings suggest that personal factors (e.g., values, environmental concern) do not always predict behaviors; it depends on how much sociocultural contexts allow individuals to express themselves freely (Fischer & Boer, 2015). By considering the dynamics of self-expression versus context-dependence, this hypothesized account also offers insights into understanding when other psychological factors are more important in determining pro-environmental behaviors. Values are just one of the many psychological factors that determine such behaviors. When individuals do not base their behaviors on self-transcendence values or self-enhancement values, what psychological factors would they refer to? One possible factor is social norm, given that following descriptive and injunctive norms could be more appealing to individuals with a stronger emphasis on context-dependence (e.g., Boer & Fischer, 2013). This speculation is consistent with Eom, Kim, and Sherman's (2018) study, in which they found that participants from lower SES group were more likely to follow the group norm (but not their climate change belief) on pro-environmental behaviors than their higher SES counterparts were. Individuals from lower SES group are likely to prefer context-dependence over self-expression, as they face stronger economic constraints. Indeed, social norms could be a powerful factor that guides behaviors, especially when there is a clear norm on what one should do in a situation (Roccas & Sagiv, 2010). Accordingly, future studies can also examine when social norms would have a stronger or weaker influence on people's pro-environmental behaviors. More importantly, it highlights the possibility to examine when personal norm and social norms would dominate individuals' behavioral decision-making regarding environmental protection. This research direction may offer significant insights into how researchers and environmental practitioners can effectively promote pro-environmental behaviors (e.g.,

relevance of personal values in determining behaviors. With data from two international surveys, this hypothesis receives support. More specifically, I found that such association was weaker in societies with weaker individualism, weaker self-expression values, lower level of economic prosperity (indicated by a lower percentage of urban population and lower GDP per capita), and more prevalence of infectious disease. Consistent with the climato-economic theory (Van de Vliert, 2009), I found a three-way interaction among climatic demand, economic resource, and values. More demanding thermal climates would cultivate a weaker emphasis on self-expression when the society has scarce resources to deal with the climatic challenge. Findings in both studies indicate that individuals tend to rely more on their self-transcendence values in societies with more demanding climate and more national resource (operationalized as GDP per capita). This pattern was also observed in Study 2 with self-enhancement values as the predictor variable. Together, these findings are consistent with the self-expression hypothesis. The findings regarding self-enhancement values appear to be less robust, as this pattern of results was found in Study 2 but not in Study 1. I will come back to this issue in the limitation section. In the following, I discuss the implications of the present findings for understanding the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors and the cross-national difference in such association. Lastly, I discuss the limitations of the present research. 4.1. Understanding the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors In understanding the association between values and pro-environmental behaviors, researchers assume that people often rely on the guidance function of values in their behavioral decision. There is thus an expectation that values promote pro-environmental behaviors. When this is not the case, researchers often attribute values-behavior gap to the failure of values in activating personal norm (i.e., a sense of moral obligation; e.g., Schultz et al., 2005). Values form the basis of personal norm, as they reflect the internalized moral standard of individuals (Stern, 2000). Two predictions have been derived based on this explanation. First, values may not relate to pro-environmental behaviors when individuals discount the seriousness of environmental problems and disregard their responsibility for the problems. Several studies found supporting evidence to this prediction with self-transcendence values as the predictor variable but not with self-enhancement values (e.g., Milfont et al., 2010; Schultz et al., 2005). Second, values exhibit only an indirect influence on people's behavioral decision regarding environmental issues through personal norm. This prediction has 8

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whether to appeal to personal norm or social norms). The present findings also bear implications for understanding the individual differences in environmentalism. People have different preferences for norm-compliance and self-expression (e.g., Kim & Sherman, 2007). For example, they may emphasize conforming to social norms and feel more comfortable to follow the rules and orders than to express themselves. They are more ready to interpret a situation based on social norms than their value principles. Consequently, social norms may have a stronger behavioral influence for these individuals (Lӧ;nnqvist et al., 2006). It is thus possible that the association between personal factors (e.g., values) and social factors (e.g., social norms) and pro-environmental behaviors varies across people's preference on self-expression (versus norm-compliance). Future studies can examine whether the selfexpression hypothesis applies to such individual differences.

4.4. Limitations The present investigation has several caveats. First, the measures of values and pro-environmental behaviors were brief and might have overlooked the influence of some important values. For example, the item of self-transcendence values did not measure the extent to which individuals consider equality between in-group and outgroup to be important. Including additional values in a value domain might strengthen its influence on pro-environmental behaviors. Similarly, the present investigation only examined two aspects of pro-environmental behaviors, namely, willingness to pay for environmental protection and public-sphere pro-environmental behavior. Whether or not the present findings could be generalized to pro-environmental behaviors in the private sphere (e.g., recycle, reduce the use of energy; see Stern, 2000) remains to be an empirical question. Nevertheless, as long as these values and behaviors are also subject to the self-expression mechanism, the hypothesized account should still hold, and a similar finding should still be expected. Another caveat of the present research is the use of the percentage of urban population to capture the effect of urban (versus non-urban) context. The social ecology in urbanized regions is different from that in non-urbanized regions. On average, non-urban regions have fewer economic resources and more tight-knit social relationships than do urban regions (Yamagishi et al., 2012). The percentage of urban population is thus considered a proxy that can measure such a difference across countries. However, it is noteworthy that this proxy is not precise measure, as it does not truly reflect where each participant lives. An individual-level measure of participants’ immediate living environment would be useful in future studies. It is noteworthy that the findings regarding self-enhancement values were mixed across the two studies. One speculation for this observation is that there were differences regarding the pro-environmental behavior measures used. Willingness to pay mainly captures individuals' intention to support for environmental protection, whereas public-sphere behavior captures individuals’ self-reported behavioral engagement. The influence of self-enhancement values on intention might be less susceptible to the influence of sociocultural contexts, as intention is neither visible nor observable. This speculation is consistent with findings in cross-cultural psychology showing that self-serving behaviors are equally pronounced across cultures when these behaviors are unlikely to be judged by others (e.g., Kim, Chiu, Peng, Cai, & Tov, 2010). Future studies can examine this possibility by examining how values relate to behavioral intention and pro-environmental behaviors with different levels of public visibility, and how such associations vary across different sociocultural contexts.

4.2. Cross-national differences The present findings imply that there is a meaningful variation of the values-behaviors link across societies with different cultures, different levels of economic development, and different levels of ecological challenges. They thus signify the importance to consider the person-context interaction pertaining to pro-environmental behaviors (Chan et al., 2019; Eom et al., 2016; Tam & Chan, 2017). Individuals’ environment-related decision is jointly determined by individual-level factors (including personal and social factors) and societal-level factors (including culture and social ecology). Considering the affordance in the sociocultural contexts can deepen our understanding of not only why people engage in pro-environmental behaviors but also under what circumstances they are more likely to do so. The self-expression hypothesis represents a validated account for researchers to explore the impact of specific sociocultural contexts (e.g., threatening and restrictive social ecology) on the relationship between individual-level factors and environmentalism. It is noteworthy that societal-level factors may jointly determine the affordance faced by individuals. For example, thermal climate and economic resource jointly shape whether or not self-expression is the optimal survival strategy (Van de Vliert, 2009). Individuals under harsher thermal climates are encouraged to express oneself only when societies can provide them with sufficient economic resources. To fully appreciate the impact of the broader societal contexts, researchers may need to pay attention to how different cultural and social ecological factors jointly define what challenges a cultural member must address (Cohen, 2001). 4.3. Practical implications

4.5. Conclusion

The present findings have two practical implications. First, they highlight the importance of considering the social context when promoting pro-environmental behaviors. In general, environmental practitioners and policymakers need to be sensitive to the potential contextual constraints individuals face. For example, in more restrictive sociocultural contexts, appealing to personal values may not be effective in promoting pro-environmental behaviors. Instead, appealing to social norms and setting up formal regulations could be more effective. Second, the self-expression hypothesis implies that encouraging the expression of oneself could be crucial to promote the correspondence between values and pro-environmental behaviors. For example, giving individuals chances to apply their values may help to enhance the behavioral influence of such values, given that such a practice makes individuals more ready to consider their values relevance in behavioral decision (see Maio, 2010). Accordingly, environmental education could be more effective if the teaching activities incorporate components that allow participants to apply their values and express their opinions freely.

Understanding why and when people would engage in pro-environmental behaviors are a pressing issue for behavioral and social scientists. The present findings contribute to this issue by revealing that personal values have a weaker behavioral influence among societies with weaker emphasis on self-expression. Accordingly, future studies should consider how personal factors and social factors jointly shape people's engagement in environmental protection in different sociocultural contexts. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101361. References Bain, P. G., Milfont, T. L., Kashima, Y., Bilewicz, M., Doron, G., Garðarsdóttir, R. B., & Corral-Verdugo, V. (2016). Co-benefits of addressing climate change can motivate

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