The future is closer than you imagine: The influence of psychological distance on people's risk perception and intentions for proenvironmental behavior of pesticides

The link between environmental threats and adverse consequences is rarely observable due to delayed consequences. Some scholars have therefore argued that decreasing the psychological distance could increase motivation to engage in proenvironmental behavior. Support for this argument has so far been mixed for climate change, perhaps because behavioral changes to mitigate climate change requires significant changes in lifestyle. This study presents a parallel line of investigation into another environmental issue, where behavioral changes are less invasive, namely, pesticides. Each of the four dimensions of psychological distances on pesticides is manipulated in a survey experiment. The findings suggest that while proximizing can, in some cases, enhance risk perception and promote behavioral intentions, the effect remains weak, supporting the argument that applying construal level theory (CLT) for predicting the effect of psychological distance on environmental issues is an overextension of the theory's original scope, also for issues other than climate change.