How Green Sentiment Promotes Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Roles of Green Commitment and Empathic Ability

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-719-4_46How to use a DOI?

Keywords

green sentiment; green commitment; pro-environmental behavior; empathic ability; moderated mediation; affective events theory

Abstract

This research explores the ways in which people’s feelings about the environment (green sentiment) impact how they behave toward it (pro-environmental behavior) and looks into two additional factors that might influence these relationships: green commitment and empathic ability (both as mediating and moderating influences). The theoretical framework of Affective Events Theory suggests that our emotions affect our behaviors through both direct and indirect pathways of development through attitudes towards a situation. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 220 respondents from Chongqing, China, and analyses were completed using SPSS and Mplus to test the moderated mediation model. The results support a positive relationship between green sentiment and pro-environmental behavior; that is, when someone feels good about the environment, they are more likely to act in ways that demonstrate their concern about it. In addition, green commitment also impacts pro-environmental behavior and serves as a mediator between green sentiment and pro-environmental behaviors. Finally, empathic ability moderates the relationship between green sentiment and green commitment and strengthens the effect at an increasing degree of empathic ability. The indirect effect of green sentiment on pro-environmental behavior through green commitment was stronger when empathic ability was high. The results provide insight into how emotional aspects affect pro-environmental behaviours and help define the emotional pathway and boundary of empathic ability within the literature.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhang Can
AU  - Wang Yong
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/09
TI  - How Green Sentiment Promotes Pro-Environmental Behavior: The Roles of Green Commitment and Empathic Ability
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 6th International Conference on Enterprise Management and Economic Development (ICEMED 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 402
EP  - 408
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-719-4_46
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-719-4_46
ID  - Can2026
ER  -