The role of national identity in collective pro-environmental action

Abstract

Both individual and collective actions are needed to address global environmental changes. Contributing to a growing literature on the collective dimension of pro-environmental actions, we examined the role of national identity in mobilizing environmental norms and pro-environmental tendencies. Latent profile analysis with a large national dataset (N = 13,942) revealed five profiles underlying participants' views of attributes necessary for being a ‘true’ New Zealander. Four profiles containing over 89% of participants placed high importance on having a clean-and-green attitude as a core component of national identity, confirming that environmentalism is part of New Zealand's zeitgeist. Importantly, believing that New Zealand has a superordinate environmental identity was associated with both individual pro-environmental tendencies and collective pro-environmental actions (i.e., support for government regulation of carbon emissions and subsidisation of public transport), both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Forging national environmental identities and norms are thus important, yet vastly underutilised, pathways to mobilise pro-environmental collective action.