Who has the future in mind? Gender, time perspectives, and pro-environmental behaviour

Abstract

An individual’s relation to time may be an important driver of pro-environmental behaviour. We studied whether young individual’s gender and time-orientation are associated with pro-environmental behaviour. In a controlled laboratory environment with students in Germany, participants earned money by performing a real-effort task and were then offered the opportunity to invest their money into an environmental project that supports climate protection. Afterwards, we controlled for their time-orientation. In this consequential behavioural setting, we find that males who scored higher on future-negative orientation showed significantly more pro-environmental behaviour compared to females who scored higher on future-negative orientation and males who scored lower on future-negative orientation. Interestingly, our results are completely reversed when it comes to past-positive orientation. These findings have practical implications regarding the most appropriate way to address individuals in order to achieve more pro-environmental behaviour.