Psychological Drivers of Environmental Action:from attitudes and identity to readiness to change

The drastic changes affecting our planet imposes an adaptive imperative: communities, indeed entire societies, must become more resilient in response to these changes (Hodgson, 2010). The behaviors and lifestyles of individuals, communities, and society play an important role in explaining global environmental threats (e.g., climate change, biodiversity decline, deforestation; Allen et al., 2018, IPCC, 2018; Laffoley and Baxter, 2016). Global environmental threats require immediate action to significantly mitigate the negative impacts of climate change (IPCC, 2018). Over the past fifty years, environmental psychology has developed into a key discipline, exploring the psychological drivers behind environmental issues and greatly expanding the scientific literature on these topics (Kaiser, 1998; Kaiser et al., 1999; Schultz & Kaiser, 2012; Markle, 2013; Bhattacharyya et al., 2020). Environmental psychology has struggled to provide explicit models capable of reliably predicting and influencing proenvironmental behavior. Indeed, various explicit dimensions, such as identity (Brick et al., 2017), attitudes (Hines et al., 1987; Tarrand & Cordell, 1997), values (Nordlund & Garvill, 2003), and self-reported intentions (Bamberg & Moser, 2007), have been studied, but their predictive power has often proven limited when applied to real-world behavioral interventions (van Valkengoed et al., 2022). For this reason, this dissertation will primarily emphasize the importance of psychological factors in combating climate change, along with traditional assessment methods and the development of proposals for more ecologically valid assessments. In the first chapter, the focus was on an overview of psychological antecedents and their assessment, specifically showcasing systematic literature reviews using PRISMA guidelines on implicit attitudes and the identity concept of connectedness to nature in relation to both Pro- Environmental Behaviors (PEBs) and Pro-Environmental Attitudes (PEAs). The second chapter presented data for the validation of the Wafer software, an eye-trackingbased measure for assessing implicit attitudes. Climate change remains a critical global issue, necessitating both systemic and individual behavioral interventions. Psychological research highlights a gap between self-reported explicit attitudes and actual pro-environmental behaviors, often influenced by implicit attitudes. Traditional tools like the Implicit Association Test (IAT) have been widely used to measure implicit attitudes but face challenges such as low reliability, susceptibility to biases, and contextual influences. Environmental psychology has shown that implicit attitudes are important predictors of behavior. Emerging technologies, such as eye-tracking, offer promising alternatives for assessing these attitudes. This tool measures 5 sustained attention non-invasively through metrics like saccadic velocity, frequency, and duration, along with fixation, blink patterns, and pupil dilation. It enables real-time monitoring of the mental processes driving implicit attitudes, offering greater ecological validity and overcoming biases typical of IAT methods. This study investigated whether sustained attention parameters derived from the eye-tracking tool WAFER could infer implicit attitudes toward climate change during exposure to relevant stimuli. The objective was to develop a measurement model that surpasses IAT limitations by leveraging eye-movement analysis and accessible, cost-effective technologies. Results showed that participants with positive implicit attitudes toward climate change exhibited greater sustained attention, particularly when associating climate change with words from the semantic field of "false." Finally, three distinct models of sustained attention were developed to predict implicit attitudes using eye movement parameters measured by the WAFER platform. By using eye movement metrics and modern, accessible technologies, these models address the limitations of traditional methods, such as the IAT, and provide a scalable, cost-effective approach for researchers and practitioners. The third chapter detailed the validation of the readiness to change scale, in Italian and German respectively, a measure already established in the literature, highlighting its potential influence on attitude formation, particularly in relation to pro-environmental attitudes. The study for the Italian validation developed a new conceptualization of the psychological construct of Readiness to Change (RtC) applied to sustainability issues and validated it internally and externally through two separate studies (N1 = 228, N2 = 713). The results drawn from these led to the selection of 29 items, divided and organized into 7 factors (namely: Perceived importance of the problem/change, Motivation, Self-efficacy, Effectiveness of proposed solution, Social support, Action and involvement, Perceived readiness). Each factor showed adequate reliability (McDonald's ω range: 0.74-0.87). Regarding external validity, the scale showed correlations - with typical to large effect sizes - with pro-environmental identity, green attitudes, sustainable intentions, and PEBs (i.e., Conservation, Environmental citizenship, Food, Transportation). Given the results obtained, the scale appears valid and usable for assessing the activation potential of both individuals but also at the group and community levels - the latter factor being an important contribution to scientific research, since most of the instruments used to date fail to estimate this aspect. The German version of the Readiness to Change (RTC) scale demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties, with reliability coefficients and factor structure aligning with those found in the Italian validation. Significant positive associations were observed between RTC dimensions and pro-environmental identity, measured through 6 Connectedness to Nature, as well as with pro-environmental attitudes, supporting the scale's external validity. Additionally, RTC was positively related to specific pro-environmental behaviors, including conservation and environmental citizenship, confirming the predictive utility of the scale in behavioral contexts. Discrepancies with the Italian study emerged, highlighting potential cultural nuances in pro-environmental motivations and behaviors. The fourth chapter investigated two different studies to develop and validate (internally and externally) a new instrument able to assess internal and external E-LOC by also capturing a third dimension in terms of community E-LOC. In the first study, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed by collecting data among 694 subjects (55.3% cis-females; mean age = 30.1, sd = 12.6). In the second study, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted on a sample of 1.852 subjects (57% cis-females; mean age = 27.6, sd = 11.4), that demonstrated an adequate fit to the theorized model. The final form of the instrument comprises nine items subdivided into internal, external, and community NE-LOC factors. Moreover, results also pointed out significant correlations between the NE-LOC scale and engagement in proenvironmental behaviors and attitudes, pro-environmental self-identity, readiness to change for sustainability, and eco-anxiety. Therefore, the NE-LOC scale can be considered a suitable instrument for the assessment of internal and external NE-LOC, as well as to measure the allocation of collective environmental responsibility. The fifth chapter explored the hypothesis that High Sensitive People (HSPs) could be more sensitive to natural stimuli, leading to a stronger environmental identity, higher level of ecoanxiety and more pronounced pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Data collection involved 501 Italian citizens (65.1% women; M age = 27.69 years, SD = 10.54). This study found positive correlations between High Sensitivity and environmental attitudes (e.g., NEP dimensions, CCAS), identity aspects (e.g., CTN), behavioral aspects (e.g., PEB), and ecoanxiety, suggesting that the HSP trait might be related to a stronger environmental identity, higher levels of eco-anxiety, and more pronounced pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. However, some exceptions were identified: Ease of Excitation and Low Sensory Threshold are not significantly correlated with conservation behaviors and environmental citizenship, while Aesthetic Sensitivity is consistently associated with PEBs. Additionally, the Low Sensory Threshold dimension appears to have a low association with attitudinal aspects measured by CCAS. This suggests the complexity of SPS and its nuanced impact on environmental dynamics. 7 The final two chapters will present case studies analyzing change processes applied to the community and organizational spheres. Specifically, the sixth chapter proposed a sex-sensitive analysis of the relationship between trust in the current Italian government (i.e., Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni) and proenvironmental behaviors related to conservation, transportation, environmental citizenship, and food consumption in a sample of 501 Italian citizens (65.1% cisgender women). The study revealed that citizens' trust in the government, particularly the perceived similarity of values, is a negative predictor of engaging in pro-environmental behaviors for both cisgender men and women. However, it is noteworthy that cisgender women reporting high similarity of values with the government exhibit a greater inclination towards conservation and sustainable dietary behaviors compared to cisgender men with a similar level of trust. Overall, the study suggests that distrust, rather than trust, should be considered valuable in environmental terms in certain contexts, such as the current Italian political landscape. The final chapter will present a case study of the company San Benedetto Spa, specifically examining the perception of the corporate brand in the fight against climate change. The dissertation will conclude with a general discussion of the work conducted, highlighting limitations and future perspectives, as well as the potential impact of the research.