Green Actions, Brighter Lives: Enhancing Well-Being Through Environmental Action

Can environmentally friendly actions boost personal well-being? Tune in to discover how a sustainable lifestyle offers profound benefits. 

In this episode, APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum speaks with Michael Prinzing from Baylor University. Prinzing shares findings from a recent research article published in Psychological Science, which highlights the link between well-being and climate action. Together, they discussed how participants from 14 countries incorporated eco-friendly actions into daily routines and how these actions globally offer a unique path to well-being. 

Send us your thoughts and questions at  [email protected].

Unedited Transcript

[00:00:00.270] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

How crucial are individual actions in addressing global climate change? Does adopting pro-environmental behaviors enhance personal well-being? Can doing good for the planet also mean feeling good? Join us as we explore these questions and uncover surprising insights into the intersection of environmental action and personal happiness. I am Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum with the Association for Psychological Science. Today, I have the pleasure of talking to Michael Prinzing from Baylor University. Michael recently published an article on well-being and climate action in APS’s journal, Psychological Science. Michael, welcome to Under the Cortex. 

[00:00:50.640] – Michael Prinzing 

Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:52.640] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Let me start with my first question right away. What got you interested in studying environmental in the first place? 

[00:01:01.730] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah. Well, so they say research is me-search. People have a, generally, a personal connection to things that they spend years of their life studying. In my case, there are a couple of things here. One is Just in general, I’m very interested in the question of what it means to live a good life and how I can live a good life, help other people to do the same. That’s the broad focus of most of what I do. In the case of this project, that’s married to this other personal which is about climate change, where this is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. I’m very personally concerned about it and want to think, how can we encourage people to do more to help mitigate climate change? How can we motivate people to be interested in doing something. And I think one of the barriers to that is the popular perception that going green is going to be bad for me, that if I do something good for the Earth, then it’s going to be negative for my well seeing. And so that win-lose mentality, it seems like a potential barrier. But it just doesn’t seem like a recipe for a good life. 

[00:02:07.330] – Michael Prinzing 

If you’re thinking in terms of people want the big house and the big car and the new iPhone every year and all that stuff. More consumption is going to be good. And so if I have to cut back on my consumption, that’s going to be bad for me. But that just to me didn’t seem like a very plausible view of what does it mean to live a good life. And so that set me off on this project. 

[00:02:26.510] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. And like you said, sometimes it can be a lot of work to implement pro-environmental behaviors, or at least it can be inconvenient for people to change their routines. So in your opinion, how could it possibly also increase subjective wellbeing? 

[00:02:44.230] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah. I mean, If you look at the media, then this is the idea you get. The way it’s portrayed in popular media, it seems like going green is bad for me. It’s inconvenient and unpleasant. We have to cut back maybe for the sake of future generations or something that. But the more that I think concretely about ordinary everyday things that people could do that are environmentally friendly, it’s actually just very unclear whether that’s true. So examples that always come to my mind are things like physically active forms of transportation. So if instead of driving, you were to walk or bike somewhere, that’s going to reduce your emissions. But it’s also just exercise. And exercise is good for you. It’s one of the most effective ways of improving mental and physical health. So There’s a case where it’s clearly a win-win. Other examples would be if you can be thrifty, if you shop second-hand versus buying something new, that’s more sustainable. But then there’s also all of this research on the hedonic effects of shopping. When people study, how do people feel when they go shopping, does it make people feel good? They actually find is people enjoy thrift shopping more than they enjoy buying things new at a typical retail store. 

[00:03:53.450] – Michael Prinzing 

Because if you think about it, you go to a retail store, you just go in, you pull something off the shelf, you leave, okay, whatever. But if you go thrift shopping, what might initially seem like an inconvenience of it’s usually a little bit messy, you might have to hunt for something before you can find what you want, in a way, maybe counterintuitively, that actually can make it more impactful on your well-being because when you find that hidden gem, it has a much more hedonic impact. The fact that you have to hunt for it a little bit makes the victory a little bit sweeter. 

[00:04:25.330] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. It comes with its benefits, right? There are all these nice things that It comes with it. Going into your research, what theories did you have about why doing pro-environmental behaviors would make people feel better? You already gave us examples, but what are the theories about this topic? 

[00:04:44.980] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah, so one idea that people have discussed in past work is this warm glow hypothesis. The idea here is that if you do something good for the Earth, then that’ll make you feel good about yourself, and that’ll make you feel happier. So if you do something that you think was good, then you feel good because you think you’re good. And there’s this other explanation that is a little bit more complicated to explain. But basically, the idea is that the very same behaviors that are good for the Earth also just, in general, tend to satisfy your basic psychological needs. So the idea here is coming out of something called self-determination theory that says human happiness is actually analogous to human health. So when a person’s basic physiological needs are met, they get enough calories and nutrients and they stay warm enough, and all that thing, then they’re going to be healthy. And so similarly, when your basic psychological needs are met, you’ll also be happy. And people debate what exactly are the basic psychological needs. But a lot of people agree that there are things like competence, meaning feeling like a capable agent, you can achieve what you set your mind to. 

[00:05:53.730] – Michael Prinzing 

Autonomy, and you get to choose your own goals. You’re not subject to somebody else’s arbitrary power or something like that. And then also related. So feeling connected with people, feeling cared for by others. And so then the idea would be that pro-environmental behaviors just tend to satisfy those needs. So just as an example, carpooling is inherently social. The more you socialize with people, the more you’re bonding with them, connecting with them. We’re in an epidemic of loneliness, according to the surgeon general at the moment. And so that would be one way maybe that you could actually start to strengthen some relationships and connect with people. Same with you go to work, maybe you start a sustainability group at work thinking about how can we make our office more sustainable? Well, that’s another way. You’re forming relationships, you’re connecting with people, and you’re satisfying that need for relatedness and connection. And there might be other kinds of examples of, like that, second-hand shopping case where if you have to hunt for that hidden gem, well, then when you find it, then that’s like, wow, you’re competent. You’ve satisfied maybe that need for competence by succeeding in something. 

[00:06:55.990] – Michael Prinzing 

The fact that it was a little more challenging in this maybe counterintuitive way, it could actually be the thing that makes it better for your well-being. 

[00:07:05.290] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. So you feel better about yourself, you increase your competence, or you increase your connections. So how can you figure out whether you have support for one explanation or the other? 

[00:07:18.090] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah, good. So the basic question first is, does pro-environmental behavior have an effect on well-being? And then the idea is, if it does, we have these two explanations. One is the warm glow What is this one? Is this basic needs hypothesis? And so they both predict that well-being will be increased by pro-environmental behavior, but they make very distinctive predictions about who will experience this effect and when and how strongly. So the warm glow hypothesis, because it says, Proenvironmental behaviors improve well-being when and because they make people feel good about themselves, that suggests that the effect should only emerge among people who actually think that doing something good for the environment is good, and that would make them feel good about themselves and thereby increase their well-being. If you had somebody who didn’t care about environmental protection, didn’t care about reducing their environmental impact, well, then why would doing that thing make them feel good about themselves? And if it doesn’t, then it shouldn’t have any effect on their well-being. On the other hand, the need satisfaction hypothesis doesn’t predict that. So if carpooling helps to satisfy your need for connection, well, then it should improve your well-being regardless of whether you care about environmental issues. 

[00:08:28.070] – Michael Prinzing 

That’s beside the point. What What matters is this behavior helping to satisfy this basic psychological need. And if it is, then it should improve your well-being. So in each of these two studies in this paper, I actually tested whether or not environmental values or the degree to which a person is concerned or cares about the environment, whether this influences the strength of the relationship between pro-environmental behavior and well-being. Also because this topic has become politically polarized, we also look at whether or not political orientation changes it, too. People on the right tend to a little bit less environmentally concerned than people on the left. Then if the warm-glow hypothesis is right, you should see that people on the left show a bigger effect than people on the right. 

[00:09:10.690] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. Let’s talk about this a little more concretely. Let’s move on to your studies. It seemed like in study one, you claimed that there is support for both theories, but in study two, there seemed to be mainly support for the need satisfaction theory. What do you make of the mixed findings in these two studies? 

[00:09:33.190] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah. First, the thing that was really clear and consistent between both studies is that pro-environmental behavior does seem to improve well-being. That’s the main thing. But then if we turn to the question of how it has that effect, then the results are a little complicated. So in study one, I found that environmental values did actually influence the strength of the link between pro-environmental behavior and well-being. It wasn’t that people who didn’t value the environment just didn’t show any associated association. Instead, it was that people who especially valued the environment showed an even stronger association than people who didn’t. So that seems like maybe the warm-glow hypothesis is doing something there. It’s not all of the explanation, but it’s at least part of it, maybe. Then in the second study, which was a true randomized experiment, the effective pro-environmental behavior on well-being actually didn’t depend on the participant’s environmental concern, their self-image as an environmentalist. It didn’t depend on their political orientation. There was no evidence of moderation. So in other words, study one offers some support for the warm-glow hypothesis, but then the second study did not. So on the whole, it really seems like the two studies overall better support the need satisfaction hypothesis. 

[00:10:43.220] – Michael Prinzing 

So in other words, my sense is the takeaway is that the warm glow hypothesis probably isn’t totally wrong. There’s probably something like that going on in at least some cases. But what does seem clear is that it’s not the sole or even the primary reason why pro environmental behavior improves well-being. So far, it seems like the evidence supports that need satisfaction hypothesis a lot more. The idea of doing something good for the Earth just generally is going to satisfy a person’s basic psychological needs because the behaviors that are good for the Earth happen to also satisfy individuals needs, and therefore that’s why it increases their well-being. That said, it’s totally possible that there’s some other explanation that’s actually a better one. So What is clear from these two studies, I think, is that we do see this effect of pro-environmental behavior on well-being, but we might need to do a bit more work to try and understand exactly how and why it does that. 

[00:11:42.060] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. All right. Thanks for the explanation. It is very clear to me that the need satisfaction theory makes more sense given your data set. In reading the paper, I also noticed that you use a secondary data set for the daily diary study. Let’s talk a little more about that. How did you get access to such a cool data set? 

[00:12:04.450] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah, that’s right. The data for that first study were originally collected by Kimberly Duhal and her colleagues. They had a similar set of research questions, but distinct. So they were actually looking at how personality traits influence pro-environmental behaviors. In their case, the outcome was the behaviors. And then I just got to flip it around and I said, Okay, do the behaviors predict well-being? And so they had posted their data online and I just reached out and I said, Hey, these are really cool. Do you mind if I use them? And they were really glad to see the data reused. In fact, there’s something actually fitting in this case, very much in the spirit of the paper, instead of spending resources to go collect some new data, we’re reusing data. 

[00:12:51.360] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Upcycled the data, yes. 

[00:12:53.990] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah, it’s a very cool data set. 

[00:12:56.870] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about it? What do those diary entries look like? 

[00:13:05.520] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah. This was, people call it an experience sampling study, which means people have an app on their phone, and at random intervals throughout the day, they get notified to complete a short survey. And this is a really cool way to study specific moments in people’s lives. You can, of course, just ask people, How do you typically behave or how do you typically feel in different kinds of situations? But often people are just really not very accurate in reporting on these kinds of things. We forget, we idealize ourselves in our own minds. There are all of these biases related to memory and self-presentation that can influence those kinds of reports. So what people do in experience sampling is they try to get you right at the right moment, right as it’s happening, you get that notification on your phone and they say, What are you doing? What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Whatever the relevant thing is right now. So in this study, it was 10 days, five times a day, they would get notified, and they would say what they were doing right at that time and how good or bad they felt at that moment. 

[00:14:08.610] – Michael Prinzing 

And then we can go through and classify all the things that they were doing. Were these environmentally friendly, neutral, or environmentally unfriendly? And we can look at how they feel in those exact moments when they’re doing something good for the Earth, something bad for the Earth, or something neutral. And then the results of that first study basically suggests that people who do more for the environment tend to feel better than people who do less. And also in the specific moments when someone does more for the environment than they typically do, they also tend to feel better. 

[00:14:38.820] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. So I have one follow-up question about that. And in your experimental studies, when you ask the students about the study, do you think they actually did the activities that they said they did? 

[00:14:56.460] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah. So in the second study, this was the randomized experiment, they come in the first time, they fill an initial survey, they get assigned instructions, and then they come back a few days later. And so in this follow-up survey, we asked first, they complete some well-being measures, but then we also just ask, Do you remember what the instructions were from the beginning. And they write in their own words what they were asked to do. And then we say, What did you do? And they write in their own words, Here’s what I did. And then we go through and we see, What did they say that they did? And in the pro-environmental behavior condition, participants wrote anywhere between zero and four things that they did for the environment. So the average was about two, but it range. So we instructed them, Do three good things for the Earth. And not everybody did, but And they could have just made something up. But in this case, they have no incentive to do so. It doesn’t change anything. They get credit for being in the study regardless. It doesn’t have any influence. They’re just like, Okay, what did you literally do? 

[00:15:57.160] – Michael Prinzing 

And some people told us they did nothing. Some people said, Yeah, I They didn’t do any of those things. So had there been perfect compliance, had everybody done all three things that they were asked to, maybe there would have been a bigger effect. It’s possible they just made it up, but they have no reason to do so. 

[00:16:12.120] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. And let’s go back to the theory. So if people do pro-environmental behaviors because it fulfills primary psychological needs, why don’t more people do those? And why is it so hard to convince people to care about the environment? 

[00:16:32.320] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah, I think that’s a really important question. A lot of researchers have found that people are actually pretty bad at predicting what’s going to make them happier. We get all these ideas, maybe from popular culture or the media, about what’s going to make us happy, but we’re often just really wrong. And so I think that’s a big part of why the scientific study of happiness and well-being is important. It can actually tell us what works. And so I’ve I’ve been working with a colleague recently, Kate Laffon, at the London School of Economics, on a paper that’s closely related to this. And in many ways, it’s a partner paper to this one, where we looked at what people in the US currently believe about the effect of pro-environmental behavior on well-being, and then also how those beliefs relate to the behaviors that people actually engage in on a daily basis. Basically, what we found is that most Americans do not think that most pro-environmental environmental behaviors have any effect on well-being one way or another. That was actually a surprise to me. I thought most people would think, It’s a little bit bad. But actually, most people think most behaviors don’t have any effect. 

[00:17:41.910] – Michael Prinzing 

But when they do think there’s an effect, overwhelmingly, people think it’s going to be a positive one. So it seems like if we talk about specific behaviors, if I say, What do you think about this action? I don’t call it pro-environmental or whatever. I just say, What do you think about doing this? Do you think it’s going to influence your well-being? Say walking or biking instead of driving, or say it’s reducing animal product consumption or all these different kinds of pro-environmental behaviors people can do. Most people think, yeah, it’s probably not going to influence my well-being one way or another. But if they think it’s going to have an effect, they think it’s going to be positive. But then what we found is the more that people think that a behavior is going to have a positive effect on their well-being, maybe unsurprisingly, the more likely they are to do it. They actually do those things more. We also were trying to look at, can we influence these beliefs and thereby shift people’s behavior? So if I tell people about, say, studies like the ones from this paper that we’ve been discussing, does that motivate them? 

[00:18:34.790] – Michael Prinzing 

Do they hear, oh, actually, going green is good for me? Well, maybe I’m more interested in doing it. And we found pretty consistently an effect on people’s attitudes towards pro-environmental behavior. We also found But when people learn about how pro-environmental behavior can improve well-being, they also tend to be more persuasive. When they end later, when they talk to people about sustainability, they’re more compelling. But when it comes to shifting intentions and I agree, it’s a lot trickier. And I think there’s a lot more work that needs to be done there. 

[00:19:04.520] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. So I find it really interesting. So people either think there’s no effect, but when they think there’s an effect, they think it’s a positive effect. Maybe as a society, global society, we are on the right track. Let’s hope so. For my final question, Michael, do you have any suggestions for easy, practical things that people can do to increase their pro-environmental and also increase their subjective well-being? You gave some examples in passing, but let’s hear them as a list from you. 

[00:19:40.070] – Michael Prinzing 

I think there are a lot of things to do, and there are a lot of online resources that have ideas that I think are really great. One simple easy example is anything where the behavior is also social. So like carpooling, living with other people, organizing a sustainability group at work. We talked a little bit about that. Anything that involves physical activity, walking, biking, etc. Instead of driving, buying things used rather than new and possible. We’ve talked about that one as well. Learning a new recipe for a plant-based meal. For a lot of these things, you can ask, How might this actually end up being good for me? And in many cases, you can find it might be more fun. It might save you money, it might help you connect with people. Obviously, there are bound to be exceptions, but as a general rule, it really does seem like very often these are win-wins. 

[00:20:33.100] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

Yeah. Your examples remind me of my time when my daughter was younger and we were making little robots out of cardboard boxes. Why not combine two things? Why not create a hobby out of pro-environmental behaviors. All right. Then I would like to repeat that it was a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for telling us about these environmental theories and sharing your insights about how we can have a better life with all these climate action choices. Thank you. 

[00:21:07.090] – Michael Prinzing 

Yeah. Thank you. 

[00:21:11.230] – APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum 

This is Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum with APS, and I have been speaking to Michael Prinzing from Baylor University. If you want to know more about this research, visit psychologicalscience.org. Do you have suggestions or questions for us? Please contact us at [email protected].