Promote pro-environmental behaviour through social media: An empirical study based on Ant Forest

Abstract

With the increasing severity of environment problems, environmental protection has become an urgent issue for society. Therefore, the pro-environmental behaviour of individuals must be promoted. Meanwhile, the rapid development of social media has changed the lifestyle of individuals and imperceptibly influences their thoughts and behaviours. Ant Forest is a popular social media application that combines an environmental-protection-themed online game with offline low-carbon activities. By the end of May 2020, Ant Forest has reached more than 550 million users. Apparently, Ant Forest could exert far-reaching influence on users’ environmental protection practices. However, the research on Ant Forest and its influence on users’ pro-environmental activities is limited. To fill this gap, we draw from value theory and establish a research model to study how Ant Forest users’ values affect their pro-environmental behavioural intentions. The model is empirically tested through a survey with 596 valid responses. Results show that users’ perceptions of the hedonic, social, altruistic and biospheric values of Ant Forest have positive impacts on their attitudes toward it. Meanwhile, users’ perceptions of the altruistic and biospheric values positively affect their pro-environmental behavioural intentions. Moreover, attitude has a positive effect on the continued gameplay intention. Finally, continued gameplay intention positively influences the pro-environmental behavioural intention.