Emotions and Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Every day, people make many decisions that can have important implications for the quality of the environment. This chapter describes the significant role emotions that can play in people's engagement in environmental behaviour. It discusses empirical research that shows how emotions can be a motive for environmental behaviour. The chapter discusses the hedonic and eudaimonic views of environmental behaviour, to gain more clarity into why pro‐environmental behaviour can be associated with negative as well as positive emotions. It elaborates on conditions under which acting pro‐environmentally elicits positive emotions. The extent to which people anticipate experiencing certain emotions as a result of environmental behaviour can have an important influence on whether or not they intend to engage in this behaviour. Based on the specific pro‐environmental behaviour at hand, acting pro‐environmentally may be pleasant or unpleasant to engage in, eliciting positive or negative emotions.