Revisiting Social Value Orientations and Environmental Attitude-Identity-Intention in Decomposed Games

Past research has identified social value orientation (e.g., prosocial vs. proself) as possible underlying facilitators of pro-environmental intentions. However, recent studies have failed to draw a causal relationship using an experimental design such as priming. The current study attempted to address this issue by revisiting the relationship using a decomposed game. In addition, the current study extended the relationship between social value orientation and different aspects of pro-environmentalism (e.g., environmental attitude, identity, and self-reported pro-environmental intention). The "Attitude-Identity-Intention" path was explored in prosocial and proself groups. One hundred and fifty participants completed the decomposed game (prosocial and proself value orientations) and their respective environmental attitude, identity, and self-reported pro-environmental intentions (PEIs) were compared. We found that prosocial participants had higher levels of environmental identity, attitude, and self-reported participatory PEIs than proself participants, but not on the leadership PEIs. In addition, environmental identity mediated the relationship between environmental attitude and self-reported PEIs. This mediation only existed among the prosocial participants. The results suggest that the decomposed game is still a valid measure in social value orientation and the relationship can be extended to different aspects of environmentalism.