The influence of scarcity perception on people's pro-environmental behavior and their readiness to accept new sustainable technologies

Abstract

Experts worldwide point to the challenges our world is facing (e.g., land degradation, resource scarcity, global warming) as described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Many studies have analyzed how to cope with these challenges. Aside from promoting pro-environmental behaviors, it was proposed that technological innovations might provide the potential to cope with and compensate for natural resource scarcity. We conducted an online survey (N = 404) investigating how people's scarcity perception is related to their willingness to adopt pro-environmental behaviors and their openness to new sustainable technologies. Regression analyses demonstrate that the anticipated future unavailability of resources is more crucial for predicting pro-environmental behavior than the perceived current resource availability. The expected reduced future availability of natural resources goes along with increased openness to sustainable energy (renergy = −0.32) and food technologies (rfood = −0.22). Moreover, a t-test provides evidence for the causal influence of scarcity perception by showing that pro-environmental behavior was higher following our scarcity salience manipulation (Cohen's d = 0.27). Further bootstrapping analyses showed that the salience affected individuals' technology openness via pro-environmental behavior. Also, pro-environmental behavior and openness to sustainable food and energy technologies were amplified when people believed that fewer resources will be available due to an increased concern about scarcity.