A Cross-Cultural Study of Environmental Motive Concerns and Their Implications for Proenvironmental Behavior

Environmental concern can be driven by biospheric, egoistic or altruistic motives. Few studies, however, have compared these three environmental motive concerns across cultural groups. This study investigated differences between European New Zealanders and Asian New Zealanders in environmental motive concerns and their implications for proenvironmental behaviors. The results demonstrated that the tripartite model of environmental concerns provided good fit in both samples. They also indicated that Asian New Zealanders were significantly higher than European New Zealanders on egoistic concern, whereas European New Zealanders were significantly higher on biospheric concern. For European New Zealanders, biospheric concern predicted proenvironmental behavior positively, whereas egoistic concern predicted it negatively. For Asian New Zealanders, in contrast, both biospheric and altruistic concerns predicted proenvironmental behavior positively. The implications of these findings for environmental education campaigns are discussed.