Motivation, Perceived Efficacy and Pro-environmental Behavioral Intentions: A Case of Ant Forest Use

Social media provide more opportunities for individuals to engage in environment issues. The emergence of the “Ant Forest”, which is a social media application for virtual tree planting, appears to offer a platform for individuals’ online environmental involvement. Prior studies had investigated and supported the effects of mass media use such as media attention to environmental news on individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors, while few studies have focused on individuals’ social media use for environmental engagement and using motivation in particular. To address this research gap, the present study aimed to explore the role of the Ant Forest use in promoting individuals’ offline pro-environmental behaviors. Although there are a number of studies examining the psychological determinants for environmental behavior outcomes, the research considering both psychological factors and communication factors is limited. Thus, this study attempted to incorporate theory of use and gratification with social cognition theory, which helped us to have a better understanding of the underlying process of the effects of the Ant Forest use on pro-environmental behaviors. More specifically, this study primarily explored young people’s motivations for using the Ant Forest, and then examined how these motivations influence individuals’ intentions to adapt two type of pro-environment behaviors-personal pro-environmental behaviors and environmental civic engagement. The role of self-efficacy and response efficacy in the relationships also examined.

An online survey of Ant Forest young users in the age between 18 to 35 (N = 123) were conducted in November 2017 in mainland China. A factor analysis indicated that motivations for using Ant Forest include two theoretical constructs-social interaction and value realization. The results of regression analysis showed that participants’ using motivation of value realization, self-efficacy and response efficacy were positively related to pro-environmental behaviors intentions, and participants’ using motivation of social interaction and response efficacy were significant predictors of intentions to environmental civic engagement. Furthermore, results also revealed that self- efficacy plays as a mediator in the relationship between using motivation of value realization and pro-environmental behavioral intentions.

These findings hold implications both for theoretical and practical developments. In theoretical dimension, focusing on the online environmental involvement on social media provides new evidences to the effects of new media use on motivating individual’s environmental responsible behaviors. Based on the self-efficacy and response efficacy theory, we can help a better understanding of the underlying process of individual environmental behaviors. In practical dimension, the findings can contribute to design social media affordance to motivate public environmental actions.