When Nature Competes: Rewarding Nature Experiences Can Undermine Prosocial and Pro-Environmental Behavior

Authors
  • Yannick Joye
  • Florian Lange
  • Aivaras Vijaikis
  • Dovilė Barauskaitė
Publication date 05-2026
Journal Journal of Environmental Psychology
Article number 103033
Volume | Issue number 111
Number of pages 10
Organisations
  • Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) - Amsterdam Business School Research Institute (ABS-RI)
Abstract
Highlights
• Nature exposure is often linked to increases in prosocial and proenvironmental behaviour.•
In a choice task, we let nature (vs. urban traffic) videos compete with effortful donation-generating slider tasks.
• In Studies 1 and 2, participants chose nature over urban traffic videos more often than donation-generating slider tasks.•
In Study 3 (hypothetical proenvironmental choices), this nature advantage was no longer statistically significant.
• The desire to experience nature may sometimes come at the expense of prosocial and proenvironmental behaviour.
Document type Article
Language English
Published at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103033
Downloads
1-s2.0-S0272494426001349-main (Embargo up to 2026-10-13) (Final published version)
Supplementary materials
1-s2.0-S0272494426001349-mmc1 (Embargo up to 2026-10-13)
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