Psychological Determinants of Environmental Conservation Behavior: Unveiling Key Influencing Factors

Anthropological actions are causing immense deterioration of the natural environment known as environmental degradation and threatening the survival of all species, including humans themselves, calling for immediate action. With increasing environmental changes and human interference or human activities leading to the destruction of natural resources and surroundings, concern towards preservation and protection of the environment has become predominant instead of making the environment safe for the future generations. The most striking aspect is assessing the probable psychological factors impacting the adoption of strategies helpful in the conservation and preservation of environment-related awareness and behaviours. The literature supports that empathy with nature can enhance pro-environmental behaviours. Where MF leads to better awareness of the internal states and external surroundings, dispositional empathy acts as bridge between inner self and the larger biosphere. The current research explores the prediction of environmental conservation behaviour (ECB), through psychological factors including satisfaction of Maslow's needs (physiological, belongingness, safety, esteem, self-actualisation), life satisfaction (LS), mindfulness (MF), and dispositional empathy with nature (DEN). Structured Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data collected from 323 male and female adults of 35-65 years of age from the state of Rajasthan, India. The findings show that dispositional empathy (DN) and mindfulness (MF) significantly predict environmental conservation behaviour (ECB), with mindfulness (MF) modelled as a function of life satisfaction (LS) and self-actualisation (SA). Further, LS was found to be significantly influenced by safety needs (SN), physiological needs (PN), esteem needs (EN) and belongingness needs (BN), whereas self-actualisation (SA) was influenced by belongingness and esteem needs. In contrast, physiological and safety needs were not found have significant impact on SA.