How to Increase Consumers' Pro‐Environmental Behaviors? The Role of Involving Consumers in Creative Activities

ABSTRACT As concerns about environmental issues continue to grow, it is a timely topic to study how to increase consumers' pro‐environmental behavior. Prior literature mainly investigated how the contextual factors influenced consumers' pro‐environmental behavior in this context. However, what consumers do and think in a previous context affects their behavior in a subsequent unrelated context. It remains unclear how to increase consumers' pro‐environmental behavior through intervening the activity type consumers conduct in a prior setting. Through six multi‐method studies including a study with secondary data and a field experiment, this paper shows that involving consumers in creative activities (vs. noncreative activities) in the prior context boosts consumers' self‐importance perception, which in turn stimulates consumers to engage in pro‐environmental behaviors. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that the effect of involving consumers in creative activities on pro‐environmental behavior amplifies (attenuates) among consumers with low self‐concept clarity (among those with high self‐concept clarity). This paper makes important contributions to the literature on pro‐environmental behavior and creative activities. It also offers insights for policymakers and businesses, suggesting that encouraging consumers to engage in creative activities can be an effective strategy to foster pro‐environmental behavior.