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Connectedness With Nature And The Decline Of Pro-Environmental Behavior In Adolescence: A Comparison Of Canada And China, Tobias Krettenauer, Wan Wang, Fanli Jia, Ying Yao

Psychology Faculty Publications

The present research investigated whether age-related differences in connectedness with nature in adolescence are associated with pro-environmental behavior across two cultures, Canada (N = 325) and China (N = 363). While older adolescents demonstrated lower connectedness with nature in both countries, pro-environmental behavior was inversely associated with age only in Canada but not in China. To investigate this cultural difference, we conducted a moderated mediation analysis. Positive self-evaluative emotion expectancies (pride/satisfaction) for engaging in pro-environmental behavior were found to mediate the interaction effect of culture and age when predicting pro-environmental behavior for Chinese but not for Canadian adolescents. …