Perceived economic inequality and pro-environmental behaviors: Moderating roles of social trust, community attachment, and environmental knowledge in a cross-country analysis of 37 nations

• This study examines how perceived economic inequality influences individual pro-environmental behaviors. • The analysis is based on individual-level data from 84,395 respondents across 37 countries. • Higher levels of perceived economic inequality are associated with lower likelihood of engaging in pro-environmental behaviors. • Multilevel regression analysis confirms that perceived economic inequality negatively effects on pro-environmental behaviors. • Higher social trust, stronger community attachment, and greater environmental knowledge mitigate the negative effects of perceived economic inequality on pro-environmental behaviors. While prior research has examined the impact of objective economic inequality on environmental behaviors, the influence of perceived economic inequality remains underexplored. This study investigates how perceived economic inequality affects individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors and whether social trust, community attachment, and environmental knowledge moderate these effects. Using cross-sectional data from 84,395 respondents in 37 countries, four behaviors are analyzed: recycling, purchasing recycled goods, taking energy-saving actions, and buying energy-efficient household products. A two-step approach is employed: bivariate analysis to reveal cross-country patterns and multilevel logit regression to test associations while accounting for individual- and country-level heterogeneity. The results show that higher perceived inequality significantly reduces the likelihood of engaging in all four behaviors (e.g., coefficient range from –0.27 to –1.05, p < 0.01). However, this negative effect is consistently moderated by higher social trust, stronger community attachment, and greater environmental knowledge, which attenuate inequality’s impact. These findings highlight the importance of subjective inequality in shaping sustainable practices and underscore the need to strengthen social and cognitive resources when designing policies to foster pro-environmental behaviors in unequal societies.