Zaikauskaitė, Laura; (2024) Moral but Eco-Unfriendly? A Deep Dive Into Pro-Environmental Morality Using Qualitative, Quantitative, and EEG Methods. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Theoretical grounds for building effective pro-environmental behaviour change interventions offer an abundance of contextual behaviour change ‘ingredients’. However, the main components driving pro-environmental behaviours and subsequent theories indicating how to use those components remain unspecified, making it difficult to evoke lasting effects. In response to the shortcomings in academic scholarship, this thesis has proposed morality as a generalisable driver of pro-environmental behaviours and has focused on building an understanding of how morality integrates into eco-psychology. Chapter 2 discusses the strength of the moral dimension using colour-emotion context associations, and provides evidence that the strength of environmental vs. ‘classical’ morality is unequal. Chapter 3 uses a moral philosophy-based measure to portray how morality lacks integration into environmental domain, and reveals the main reason behind the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap. Chapters 4-5 incorporate rational choice models to establish that morality fails to translate from attitudes to intentions, and suggests that psychology-based models may be more likely to return exaggerated, biased representations of theory vs. real-life situations, whereas moral philosophy-based models predict the relationships between morality and pro-environmental behaviours more accurately. Chapter 6 uses interviews to acquire a better insight into the content of moral dimension, and presents specific moral reasoning-based nuances associated with complex emotions, feelings, and experiences leading to the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap across the groups of Extinction Rebellion activists and the General Public. Chapter 7 incorporates neuroscience to further the understanding of how morality integrates across the two groups on the brain level. Chapter 8 takes a multidisciplinary approach to re-conceptualise ‘pro-environmentalism’ and outlines the theory of Moral Expression as conceptually new framework within which to re-interpret pro-environmental studies. The overall thesis findings provide the evidence-based directions to refine the understanding of the pro environmental integration and measurement of morality, thus systematising means to close the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap.

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