Motivating environment protection by elevating perceived control

As a global community, humankind stands before a monumental challenge: to change our behavioral habits toward a more sustainable way of life. There are multiple paths toward that challenge, one of which is motivating citizens to engage in more pro-environmental behavior in everyday life. In this series of experiments (N = 521 participants), we pioneer a new paradigm that simulates everyday decision making via narrative-interactive choice elements to evaluate motivating strategies with a specific focus on sense of agency (SoA), that is, perceived control. To this end, we first characterize different individual motivators in fostering pro-environmental behavior. Further, in an experimental approach, we implement prompt variants into the narrative-interactive choice elements paradigm (color coding of choices vs. information on choice consequences) aligned with different aspects of SoA formation to test how SoA might facilitate pro-environmental decisions. Our results demonstrate that increased SoA is associated with pro-environmental behavior and showcase how prompt variants during decision making may affect pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, our results demonstrate a strong association of the participants' attitude toward environmental protection with SoA and pro-environmental behavior. SoA has been identified as a crucial aspect of action motivation; the present study provides compelling evidence that optimizing SoA may provide a much-needed strategy in fostering sustainability behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).