Emotion and Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Examining the Emotive Effects of Climate Change Documentaries on PEBs

Ikram, Maria (2022) Emotion and Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Examining the Emotive Effects of Climate Change Documentaries on PEBs. Master thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

This study examines how elicited sadness and anger while watching climate change documentaries influence pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). These documentaries hold a principal objective of increasing PEBs and have the powerful advantage of reaching a global audience. These documentaries often elicit emotions of sadness or anger, yet their impact on PEB remains unclear. A nascent body of work has provided insight that sadness and anger effectively increase PEBs. These findings run parallel to the Differential Emotions Theory (DET), which explains that these emotions have adaptive functions. This study hypothesized that individuals elicited to be sad or angry will increase their PEB (World Wildlife Fund donations). This study also investigated whether sadness and anger influence PEBs differently (i.e., choosing an altruistic or punitive PEB and time spent completing a donation exercise). By employing the DET framework, it was hypothesized that participants in the sad condition would choose an altruistic PEB (helping communities) and spend more time completing the exercise, and vice-versa, participants in the anger condition would choose a punitive PEB (enforcing penalties) and spend less time. To test these predictions, three emotion elicitation excerpts (sad, angry, neutral) were created by extracting content from climate change documentaries. The main results of this study did not support the stated hypotheses. However, findings showed that those in the sad condition significantly donated more than those in the anger condition. Supplementary analyses also revealed that participants who reported to feel more sad across conditions donated more than those who did not.

Item Type:	Thesis (Master)
Supervisor name:	Keizer, K.E.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	Environmental Psychology (EP) [Master Psychology]
Date Deposited:	28 Jul 2022 13:39
Last Modified:	28 Jul 2022 13:39
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/1191

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