Climate change mitigation: A question of humanitarian or environmental motivation?

Addressing climate change at the individual level and the associated conflict between self-interest and the common good is viewed primarily as a motivational challenge in the environmental domain. However, due to this conflict, climate change mitigation has also been framed as a classical social dilemma that requires direct, overt cooperation with other people. Thus, there seems to be a lack of clarity in the extents to which climate change mitigation depends on humanitarian-prosocial motivation or environmental motivation. This study investigates the extents to which individual climate change mitigation is driven by humanitarian and environmental motivation – two motivations that are rooted in an inherent human prosocial propensity that stems from a combination of our genetic makeup and our established culture of prosocial behavior. We conducted a laboratory experiment using an adapted Public Goods Game in an environmental context with N = 201 participants. We found that both humanitarian and environmental motivation positively predicted pro-environmental choices in the Public Goods Game, with humanitarian motivation as the stronger predictor. On a theoretical level, these results suggest that environmentally positive behaviors that demand significant cooperation could be more accurately understood as both humanitarian-prosocial behaviors and pro-environmental actions. On a practical level, interventions should be tailored to the required level of cooperation, for instance, through framing or by promoting a sense of connectedness with either fellow humans or nature. •Environmental and humanitarian motivations are rooted in a prosocial propensity.•Climate Public Goods Game reveals influence of both humanitarian and environmental motivation.•Climate Public Goods Game reveals stronger influence of humanitarian over environmental motivation.•Climate change mitigation may be better framed as an issue of cooperation.