Promoting Public Pro-environmental Behaviors: Only the Sustainability Mindset Can Help?

Public pro-environmental behaviors including environmental activism and non-activist behaviors require strong motivations by signifying collective impacts to shape environmental policies. This study re-conceptualizes sustainability mindset perspective of being (identity), knowing (cognitive understanding), and doing (behavior) to explain the behaviors. Using SMARTPLS with survey data from 454 consumers, the study provided supported evidence that the three dimensions of a sustainability mindset drive public pro-environmental behaviors through a sequence of impacts and interactions. Specifically, perceived effectiveness (knowing) was found to impact private pro-environmental behaviors (doing). Private pro-environmental behaviors (doing) were the strongest predictor of public ones (doing) that positively moderated by pro-environmental identity (being). This study, thus, advances the literature of public pro-environmental behaviors and broadens the sustainability mindset perspective.