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. 2021 May:168:105467.
doi: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105467. Epub 2021 Feb 3.

How does COVID-19 emergency cognition influence public pro-environmental behavioral intentions? An affective event perspective

Lingyun Mi  1 , Jingjing Zhao  1 , Ting Xu  1 , Hang Yang  1 , Tao Lv  1 , Ke Shang  2 , Yaning Qiao  2 , Zhaopu Zhang  1
Affiliations

How does COVID-19 emergency cognition influence public pro-environmental behavioral intentions? An affective event perspective

Lingyun Mi et al. Resour Conserv Recycl. 2021 May.

Abstract

Social impacts and serious damages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in public introspection on the issue of ecological environmental protection. However, whether the public cognition of COVID-19 can promote pro-environmental behavioral intentions (PEBI) has not yet been determined; this is crucial for studying the ecological significance of the pandemic. Based on the affective events theory (AET), this study investigated the mechanism by which COVID-19 emergency cognition influences public PEBI. Following an analysis of 873 public questionnaires, the results reveal that public cognition of COVID-19 emergency can significantly promote PEBI. Among them, the effect of emergency coping is stronger than that of emergency relevance. Besides, the positive and negative environmental affective reactions aroused by COVID-19 pandemic play a mediating role between the emergency cognition and PEBI. Moreover, the positive environmental affective reactions show a stronger positive effect on household-sphere PEBI. However, the negative environmental affective reactions are more prominent in promoting public-sphere PEBI. This research aims to bridge a research gap by establishing a link between COVID-19 pandemic and PEBI. The findings can provide useful recommendations for policymakers to find the opportunity behind the COVID-19 emergency to promote public PEBI.

Keywords: Affective events theory; COVID-19; Event cognition; Pro-environmental behavioral intentions; Public health emergency; Structural equation model.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Model of hypotheses.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Structural equation model and standardized estimate values.
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