From awe to action? An interdisciplinary, systematic review of awe's potential influence on pro‐environmental behaviour

Abstract Addressing climate change requires a massive shift towards pro‐environmental behaviour. These behaviours help protect the environment, drive conservation activities, support environment policies and increase sustainability across many avenues and sectors. To facilitate this shift, practitioners and scholars must look beyond rationality‐driven motivations to the emotional drivers that shift individuals' worldviews over the longer term. Of many possible emotional drivers, we present a critical, systematic scoping review of awe and its connections to pro‐environmental behaviour. Our review findings indicate that even with varied methods, approaches and measures, awe was repeatedly found to be effective at positively influencing pro‐environmental behaviour. Informed by our findings, we propose that awe merits greater attention because of its documented influence on pro‐environmental behaviour, our connection to nature, self‐concept and perceived barriers to environmental action. We provide a foundation from which interdisciplinary environmental scholars—including those deeply embedded in the connection between people and nature—might design research that incorporates awe as a conceptual context, a methodological framework or an empirical variable. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.