Envy and Environmental Decision Making: The Mediating Role of Self-Control

Emotions have strong impacts on decision making, yet research on the association between social interpersonal emotion and environmental decisions is limited. The present study uses experimental manipulation and cross-sectional investigation to examine how envy state and personality trait envy influence environmental actions. In Study 1, participants were manipulated to elicit benign and malicious envy, and it was found that benign envy acts as an antecedent of pro-environmental behavior, while malicious envy could contribute to behavior harmful to the environment. Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1 and examined the mediator of self-control through a correlational study. Consequently, people who are high in malicious envy tend to engage in more environmentally harmful activities rather than living a sustainable life, while dispositional benign envy could significantly predict pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, the link between dispositional malicious envy and environmental behavior can be explained by trait self-control, while the mediating effect was silent in dispositional benign envy. The findings shed new light on the impact of social interpersonal emotion on making environmental decisions and its related psychological mechanisms.

Dynamics of environmental decision making: A preliminary study

Little research attention has been paid to the cognitive processes underlying environmental decision making. We examined environmental decisions in public and private spheres made under different decision time periods, using a minimal version of the dictator game. Participants made binary decisions according to whether they would cede their cash proceeds to support environmental conservation. The results show that time pressure amplified participants' behavioral preferences: More proenvironmental choices were made under time pressure than when there was a time delay allowed or when there was no time limit on the decision. This bias was found to occur intuitively, without significant differences resulting from the environmental decisions being in public versus private spheres. These findings provide preliminary evidence that environmental decisions are the outcome of intuitive and deliberative processes.

Justificatory Moral Pluralism: A Novel Form of Environmental Pragmatism

Moral reasoning typically informs environmental decision-making by measuring the possible outcomes of policies or actions in light of a preferred ethical theory. This method is subject to many problems. Environmental pragmatism tries to overcome them, but it suffers also from some pitfalls. This paper proposes a new method of environmental pragmatism that avoids the problems of both the traditional method of environmental moral reasoning and of the general versions of environmental pragmatism. We call it ‘justificatory moral pluralism’ – it develops the intuition that normative ethical theories need not be mutually exclusive. This leaves room for important forms of pluralist environmental ethics that do not require a once-and-for-all prior commitment to an ethical theory when deciding about policies or courses of action related to the protection of the environment. Justificatory moral pluralism offers a viable solution to the recurrent conflicts between efficient environmental decisions and the need for moral reasoning.

Exploring legitimization strategies for contested uses of citizen-generated data for policy

In this article, we investigate how citizens use data they gather as a rhetorical resource for demanding environmental policy interventions and advancing environmental justice claims. While producing citizen-generated data (CGD) can be regarded as a form of ‘social protest’, citizens and interested institutional actors still have to ‘justify’ the role of lay people in producing data on environmental issues. Such actors adopt a variety of arguments to persuade public authorities to recognize CGD as a legitimate resource for policy making and regulation. So far, scant attention has been devoted to inspecting the different legitimization strategies adopted to push for institutional use of CGD. In order to fill this knowledge gap, we examine which distinctive strategies are adopted by interested actors: existing legitimization arguments are clustered, and strategies are outlined, based on a literature review and exemplary cases. We explore the conceivable effects of these strategies on targeted policy uses. Two threads emerge from the research, entailing two complementary arguments: namely that listening to CGD is a governmental obligation and that including CGD is ultimately beneficial for making environmental decisions. We conclude that the most used strategies include showing the scientific strength and contributory potential of CGD, whereas environmental rights and democracy-based strategies are still rare. We discuss why we consider this result to be problematic and outline a future research agenda.

Environmental Practices in Firms Located in Underpopulated Rural Areas in Spain: The Case of the Province of Teruel

This study aims to develop a better understanding of what drives small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in environmental practices in isolated rural areas. Despite a growing literature on environmental behavior in different contexts, the green activities of SMEs in rural areas remains underexposed. This neglect is remarkable, and deserves attention given the serious depopulation problems they have to face, and the economic and social challenges that lie ahead. Using unique data from 141 SMEs in one of the most sparsely populated regions in the European Union, we study the influence of territorial relations on firms’ environmental conduct. Our results suggest that different territorial factors have some impact on the adoption of environmental practices. We report evidence indicative of the role of these factors in shaping environmental decisions. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research that could further develop our understanding of environmental management decisions in rural and underpopulated areas.

In the Name of Legitimacy and Efficiency: Evaluating China’s Legal Reform on EIA

The environmental impact assessment (EIA) system is currently located at the centre of China's environmental legal reform. The Chinese government has undertaken significant legal strategies to rectify past regulatory wrongs, close enforcement gaps, and improve public participation. However, ongoing administrative reform and prevailing policies optimizing the business environment have made the efficacy of EIA reform more complicated and uncertain. Through examining how EIA laws and regulations on accountability, compliance, and participation have changed, this article provides an analytical framework to evaluate current legal reform of EIA. It finds that the Chinese government is attempting to bring about genuinely functional EIA reform by improving the legitimacy and efficiency of EIA in delivering better environmental decisions. Yet, its efforts could be undermined by the unsettled conflict between legitimacy and efficiency. Furthermore, functional EIA reform could be constrained by peripheral challenges such as inconsistent institutional arrangements, the undefined role of the judiciary, and an underrepresented environmental public interest.