Impact of physical and social living environments on pro-environmental intentions

Abstract

The living environment might play an important role in shaping the pro-environmental intentions of the people. However, there was limited research on how the living environments influenced the pro-environmental intentions of people. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the direct effects of physical and social environments on pro-environmental intentions as well as the mediating effects of environmental attitudes and life satisfaction. Structural Equation Modeling was used with data extracted from the 2020 Taiwan Social Change Survey database (n = 1671). Results showed direct positive associations of both physical and social environments with pro-environmental intentions (β = 0.133 and β = 0.076, respectively) as well as indirect positive associations via the life satisfaction-mediating pathway (β = 0.031 and β = 0.044, respectively). The physical environment negatively influenced pro-environmental intentions through the environmental attitude pathway (β = - 0.255) with unpleasant neighborhood enhancing the pro-environmental intentions of residents. Taken together, the overall effect of the physical environment was negative (β = - 0.093) while that of the social environment was positive (β = 0.109). The most important factors for the physical and social environments were disturbance and livability in north, central and south Taiwan, neighborhood pollution and interestingness in east Taiwan. Accordingly, minimizing disturbance and neighborhood pollution of the physical environment could have the highest effect on pro-environmental intentions enhancement in western and eastern Taiwan, respectively. For the social environment, improving livability in the west and interestingness in the east would have an even larger impact on pro-environmental intentions. This study emphasized the importance of neighborhood environment on the environmental intentions of the people. The study also identified the important factors for policymakers to target to achieve the best effect on improving environmental intentions.