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Environmentalism as a trait: Gauging people's

prosocial personality in terms of environmental
engagement
a b c
Florian G. Kaiser & Katarzyna Byrka
a
Otto-von-Guericke University , Magdeburg, Germany
b
Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities , Wroclaw, Poland
c
Eindhoven University of Technology , Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Published online: 10 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Florian G. Kaiser & Katarzyna Byrka (2011) Environmentalism as a trait: Gauging people's
prosocial personality in terms of environmental engagement, International Journal of Psychology, 46:1, 71-79, DOI:
10.1080/00207594.2010.516830

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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 2011, 46 (1), 71–79

Environmentalism as a trait: Gauging people’s

prosocial personality in terms of
environmental engagement

Florian G. Kaiser1 and Katarzyna Byrka2,3

1
Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany
2
Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw, Poland
3
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Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

A ccording to Hardin (1968), environmental deterioration stems from self-interest undermining people’s
resource conservation in the collective interest. Not surprisingly, selfless prosocial motives, such as personal
feelings of moral obligation, have often been recognized as a key force behind people’s environmentalism.
In our research, we anticipated that environmentalists—people with an inclination for pro-environmental
engagement—would possess a propensity to generally act prosocially. In an extension of previous work, we
expected that a well-established self-report measure of past conservation behavior would predict people’s active
participation in a psychological experiment. Based on subjects’ degree of environmental engagement, originally
established in 2003, we re-contacted a sample of 502 persons in 2005. Of these 502 (68.5% low, 31.5% high
in environmentalism), 131 showed up for the announced experiment. Among those participants, we found
that environmentalists’ prosocial personalities were additionally reflected in their social value orientations.
Ninety percent of the environmentalists turned out to be prosocials, whereas only 65% of the less
environmentally engaged subjects were prosocials. Overall, our findings lend credit to a notion of environmen-
talism as an indicator of even subtle quantitative differences in a person’s prosocial trait level. By and large,
environmentalists acted more prosocially even in mundane activities unrelated to environmental conservation.
Additional evidence comes from the commons dilemma experiment in which the participants partook.
There, we generally found comparatively more cooperation with others for the collective good from people high
in environmentalism. Our findings represent circumstantial evidence for a prosocial propensity dimension
along which people differ, and which is also reflected in people’s pro-environmental behavioral performance.
If, however, environmentalism has to be regarded as indicative of a prosocial trait rather than a state-like
motive, high hopes for moral norms and other prosocial motives in environmental conservation do not seem
warranted.

Keywords: Environmental attitudes; Personality traits; Social values; Prosocial behavior; Conservation
(ecological behavior).

S elon Hardin (1968), la dégradation environnementale provient de l’intérêt personnel qui mine la protection
des ressources des personnes dans l’intérêt collectif. Sans surprise, des motifs prosociaux désintéressés, tels
que des sentiments personnels d’obligation morale, ont souvent été reconnus comme des forces clef derrière
l’environnementalisme des gens. Dans notre travail de recherche, nous avons anticipé que les environnementa-
listes –personnes ayant une inclination pour un engagement pro-environnemental– auraient une propension a

Correspondence should be addressed to Florian G. Kaiser, Otto-von-Guericke University, Institute of Psychology, PO Box 4120,
D-39016 Magdeburg, Germany. (E-mail: florian.kaiser@ovgu.de).
This research was financially supported by a grant from the J. F. Schouten Graduate School of User–System Interaction
Research at Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Additionally, we were assisted by the
Eindhoven Municipality. We acknowledge the Research & Statistics Department of the Eindhoven Municipality, namely,
Carla Verheijen, Bas Oude Hengel, and Kees van der Hoeven, for their cooperation. We also wish to thank Jane Thompson
and Steven Ralston for their language support, and Caroline Duvier, Jeffrey Joireman, Paul van Lange, three anonymous
reviewers, and the editor, Michèle Robert, for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.
ß 2010 International Union of Psychological Science
http://www.psypress.com/ijp DOI: 10.1080/00207594.2010.516830
 72 KAISER AND BYRKA

généralement agir prosocialement. Dans le prolongement d’un travail antérieur, nous nous attendions à ce qu’une
mesure auto-rapportée bien établie d’un comportement passé de protection prédise la participation active de ces
personnes dans une expérience de psychologie. Basé sur le degré d’engagement environnementaliste des
participants, initialement établi en 2003, nous avons contacté à nouveau un échantillon de 502 personnes en 2005.
Finalement, 131 personnes (68.5% bas, 31.5% haut en environnementalisme) ont participé à l’expérience. Parmi
ceux-ci, nous avons trouvé que la personnalité prosociale des environnementalistes se reflétait dans les
orientations de leurs valeurs sociales. 90% des écologistes sont prosociaux tandis que 65% des personnes les
moins engagées l’étaient. Au total nos résultats confèrent du crédit à la notion d’environnementalisme en tant
qu’indicateur de différences quantitatives subtiles au niveau du trait prosocial des personnes. Dans l’ensemble, les
écologistes agissent plus prosocialement même lors d’activités triviales non liées à la protection environnementale.
Des preuves supplémentaires viennent de l’expérience de dilemme des ressources à laquelle les sujets ont participé.
Là, nous avons généralement trouvé plus de coopération avec les autres pour le bien collectif de la part des
personnes fortement impliquées en environnementalisme. Nos résultats présentent des preuves indirectes à
propos de la propension prosociale selon laquelle les gens diffèrent, et qui est aussi reflétée dans leurs
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comportements pro-environnementalistes. Si toutefois l’environnementalisme doit être considéré comme un trait

prosocial plutôt qu’un motif, de grands espoirs pour les normes morales et autres motifs prosociaux dans la
protection environnementale ne sont pas garanties.

S egún Hardin (1968), el deterioro del medio ambiente se deriva del interés propio que socava
la conservación de los recursos de las personas en el interés colectivo. No es de extrañarse que
los motivos prosociales desinteresados, tales como los sentimientos personales de obligación moral, han sido
a menudo reconocidos como una fuerza clave detrás del ambientalismo de las personas. En nuestra
investigación, anticipamos que los ambientalistas –aquellas personas con una inclinación hacia el compromiso
en pro del medioambiente– poseerı́an, en general, una propensión a actuar prosocialmente. En una extensión
de un estudio anterior, supusimos que un instrumento de autoinforme bien establecido de conducta
de conservación administrado previamente predecirı́a la participación activa de los jóvenes en un
experimento psicológico. Basados en el grado de compromiso medioambiental de los sujetos, originalmente
establecido en 2003, se volvió a contactar a una muestra de 502 personas en 2005. De estos 502
(68,5% bajo y 31,5% alto en ambientalismo), 131 se presentaron para el experimento anunciado. Entre los
participantes finales, encontramos que las personalidades prosociales de los ambientalistas se reflejaban,
además, en sus orientaciones hacia los valores sociales. El noventa por ciento de los ambientalistas que se
presentaron para el experimento resultó ser prosocial, mientras que sólo el 65% de los sujetos
ambientalmente menos comprometidos eran prosociales. De modo general, nuestros resultados dan crédito
a la noción de que el ambientalismo es un indicador de diferencias cuantitativas incluso sutiles en el nivel de
prosocialidad de una persona. En general, los ambientalistas actuaron de manera más prosocial, inclusive en
actividades comunes no relacionadas con la conservación del medio ambiente. La evidencia adicional
proviene del experimento de dilemas comunes en el que los participantes estuvieron involucrados.
Comparativamente encontramos más cooperación con los demás por el bien común de parte de las
personas que habı́an puntuado alto en ecologismo. Nuestros resultados representan una evidencia
circunstancial que manifiesta una tendencia prosocial en la que las personas difieren, y que también se
refleja en el desempeño conductual pro-ambiental de las personas. Sin embargo, si el ambientalismo es
considerado como un indicio de un rasgo prosocial en lugar de un estado, las grandes esperanzas en las
normas morales y otros motivos prosociales en relación a la conservación del medio ambiente no parecen
estar justificadas.

If environmental deterioration stems from self-
interest, which undermines people’s resource
conservation in the common interest, many
currently existing environmental problems can
be viewed as commons dilemmas (Hardin, 1968).
Concomitantly, cooperation in commons
dilemmas has been regarded as a comparatively
selfless, prosocial behavior (Kramer, McClintock,
& Messick, 1986), and a person’s prosocial
disposition has consistently predicted coopera-
tion in commons dilemmas (Van Lange, 1999).
In conservation psychology, selfless prosocial
motives, such as a person’s felt moral obligation,
have also been recognized as key forces behind
environmental conservation (e.g., Stern, 2000).
Based on self-reported data and with up to 80–
90% explained behavior variance, Kaiser (2006)
accordingly concluded that self-interest (i.e., utility
considerations) was irrelevant for people’s envir-
onmental engagement (cf. Milfont & Duckitt,
2004; Schultz, 2001). Due to this and some similar
findings of a strong prosocial basis for people’s
environmental engagement, we suspect a trait-like
(i.e., an enduring and comparatively unalterable)
disposition to be at work rather than a context-
specific, situation-dependent ad-hoc motivational

state. In other words, we have come to believe that
environmental engagement essentially reflects a
person’s prosocial, moral nature.
In this paper, we argue that environmentalists
(i.e., persons high in environmental engagement)
are the ‘‘better’’ people. Regardless of the specifics
of any particular prosocial engagement, we
expected environmentalism to predict people’s
propensity to act prosocially even outside the
environmental domain. Also, we extended existing
work by exploring the consistency between peo-
ple’s self-reported environmental engagement and
some specific overt but mundane prosocial
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behavior.
SOCIAL VALUE ORIENTATION IN
COMMONS DILEMMAS
Social dilemmas (including public good or
resource dilemmas with open access to the
resource; see e.g., Komorita & Parks, 1995) are
situations in which people are confronted with a
choice between personal and collective benefits.
Psychologically, we assume that people are con-
fronted with a genuine conflict between their
prosocial propensity to cooperate with others for
the greater collective good and their inclination to
maximize their personal gains. By and large, the
pursuit of self-interest (i.e., maximizing personal
benefits) is commonly found to be the prevailing
strategy (Gifford & Hine, 1997).
Nevertheless, people differ in their tendencies to
cooperate with one another in social dilemmas
(Kramer et al., 1986). While multiple explanations
have been recognized for these individual differ-
ences, most of them seem to be linked to people’s
prosocial makeup: their conformity, altruism,
righteousness, moral integrity (Gifford & Hine,
1997; Komorita & Parks, 1995), or social value
orientation (Van Lange, 1999). According to
theory on social value orientation, one can
expect prosocials to be dispositionally inclined to
maximize collective outcomes and, thus, to be
more likely to cooperate with others.
Research on social value orientation has addi-
tionally confirmed its ecological validity by corro-
borating its ability to predict cooperative
behaviors, such as volunteering time and helping
the poor or ill with donations, even outside the
laboratory (e.g., McClintock & Allison, 1989).
Concomitantly, social value orientation has
repeatedly also been found to be related to
environmental conservation (e.g., Joireman, van
Lange, Kuhlman, van Vugt, & Shelley, 1997).
ENVIRONMENTALISM AS A TRAIT 73
PROSOCIAL CONSIDERATIONS IN
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION
In conservation psychology, the accumulated
evidence indicates that people’s conservation
performance is strongly determined by normative
prosocial influences. In particular, a person’s
moral obligation seems to be the most promising
predictor (e.g., Bamberg & Möser, 2007). The
effect becomes even more prominent when
concepts are assessed in a more trait-like fashion
and with technically advantageous—in terms of
accuracy—aggregated, multi-item measures.
In three systematic but atypical (as scales were
employed) explorations of a moral norms-
extended planned behavior model (Ajzen, 1991),
a person’s moral obligation did not improve
explanatory power (e.g., Kaiser, Hübner, &
Bogner, 2005). Instead, the evidence showed a
substantial overlap between environmental atti-
tude and moral norms, which resulted in suppres-
sor effects in two of three studies by Kaiser and his
colleagues. It seemed as though people’s moral
norms were already represented in their environ-
mental attitudes. In other words, with a more trait-
like, scale-based measurement of concepts, which
already reflects a prosocial disposition, people’s
environmental engagement can be predicted with
accuracies up to 80–90% (Kaiser, 2006). Thus, we
believe that these findings speak largely of a trait-
like, durable disposition to rather selflessly engage
in pro-environmental actions.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGAGEMENT
If a person aims to achieve a certain goal
(e.g., environmental conservation), we can expect
this person to engage in various respective
activities, such as bike riding or recycling. Such
a composite of behaviors implies that people can
select from various alternatives to realize their
individual aspiration level, which leaves them with
choices. Instead of running energy-efficient wash-
ing programs, people can abstain from using a
dryer or focus more on which detergents they use.
A person’s pro-environmental aspiration becomes
obvious in the face of increasingly demanding
activities or progressively intolerable sacrifices
(cf. Schultz & Oskamp, 1996). Necessarily, the
more obstacles someone overcomes and the more
effort a person expends along the way to realizing
his or her goal, the more evident that person’s
engagement is. Why would someone bother to ride
a bike every morning through rain and snow,
 74 KAISER AND BYRKA
switch to a vegetarian diet, and struggle with his
or her kids to save warm water if one was not
committed to environmental conservation?
Likewise, when the tiniest inconvenience is enough
to stop a person from engaging in a behavior, the
devotion to the particular goal must be rather low.
Simultaneously, any behavior involves costs as it
requires personal resources such as time, money,
and effort. If one’s engagement can be manifested
by a variety of different acts, we can anticipate
a prudent selection of these behaviors. Naturally,
people commonly prefer the more convenient,
more socially sanctioned behaviors over the more
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complicated, strenuous, or pricey ones. Thus, we
can assume that people favor less demanding
actions over more demanding ones. This becomes
tangible in the relative popularity of various
conservation behaviors. This popularity of a
behavior is, in turn, anticipated to be a function
of two components: (a) people’s overall environ-
mental engagement, and (b) the composition of all
the figurative costs of a particular behavior. Kaiser
and colleagues corroborated that the Rasch model
can be used to describe this functional relationship
(e.g., Kaiser & Wilson, 2004). The classical Rasch
model and, thus, the functional link between a
person’s overall engagement and his or her
probability to act in a certain way is depicted
with the following formula (for more details see,
e.g., Bond & Fox, 2001):
 
pki
ln ¼ k  i
1  pki
where the natural logarithm of the ratio of the
probability (pki) of person k to take on a specific
behavior i relative to the probability of non-action
(1  pki) is given by the difference between k’s
overall environmental engagement (k) and the
composite of all the figurative costs of this
behavior (i). Note that in this mathematical
formalization, people are distinguishable with
respect to their overall levels of engagement, and
behaviors are distinguishable by how ‘‘costly’’ they
are to realize. By applying the Rasch model,
Kaiser and colleagues were additionally able to
circumvent some well-known technical problems
of conventional factor analytical approaches that
can occur when behaviors are involved (see e.g.,
Kaiser, Oerke, & Bogner, 2007).
RESEARCH GOALS
In the current study, we expected environmental-
ists to generally act comparatively more
prosocially, regardless of the specifics of the
particular behavior. Logically, we anticipated a
well-established environmental engagement mea-
sure to validly reflect people’s prosocial disposi-
tions rather well. In other words, people high in
environmental engagement should act more pro-
socially even when asked for rather mundane
favors, such as participating in a psychological
experiment. We aimed to extend previous research
as we explored the relationship of a self-report
measure of overall environmental engagement
with a specific overt prosocial behavior.
METHOD
Participants and procedures
In 2003, we randomly sampled 4,445 residents
from the municipal register for Eindhoven, The
Netherlands. Of these, 1,746 persons returned
usable questionnaires (response rate: 39.28%),
either spontaneously or after one reminder. Their
average age was 46.38 (SD ¼ 18.16, range: 15–84).
Of these participants, 868 were female (49.71%)
and 878 were male (50.29%). This sample was not
representative of Eindhoven but gave no indica-
tion of a severe restriction of range in its
environmental engagement.
In 2005, based on their degree of environmental
engagement, we re-contacted 502 (28.75%)
persons from the original 1,746 participants first
by mail and subsequently by telephone. The
participants were invited to partake in a study
about decision making without any reference to
the particular content of the decision task. Of the
502 persons contacted, 344 (68.52%) were low and
158 (31.48%) high in their environmental engage-
ment. The definition for low was a maximally
average engagement score, whereas high engage-
ment was a score minimally one standard devia-
tion above the average.
Of the 502 people contacted, 68 (13.55%) could
not be reached, which left a sample of 434
(86.45%). Of those, 303 (69.82%) did not accept
our request to participate—of whom 259 (59.68%)
explicitly refused. Of the 434, 293 (67.51%)
persons were low and 141 (32.49%) high in their
environmental engagement. Of the 131 (30.18%)
who actually came to the laboratory, 79 (60.31%)
were men and 52 (39.69%) were women, with a
mean age of 54.93 (SD ¼ 16.16).
Note that generally in this research, the
alpha level was set at p ¼ .05. Of the participants
who came to the laboratory, a larger proportion
of females were high in environmental engagement

(50.87%) compared to males (31.08%),
2(1) ¼ 5.27, 2 ¼ .04. Persons high in environ-
mental engagement were older (M ¼ 59.49,
SD ¼ 14.42, range: 26–83) than persons low in
engagement (M ¼ 51.42, SD ¼ 16.63, range: 18–
83), F(1, 130) ¼ 8.50, Z2 ¼ .06.
Measures
Our dependent variable (prosocial behavior) was
whether the subject personally appeared on site to
participate (show vs. no-show). Environmental
engagement was measured using a composite of
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50 self-reported behaviors from the General
Ecological Behavior scale (e.g., Kaiser & Wilson,
2004). The behavioral self-reports represent var-
ious conservation domains, such as energy con-
servation, transportation, consumerism, and
recycling. Eighteen relatively more permanent
behaviors, such as membership in a car pool,
were examined with a yes/no format (indicating
either ‘‘ecological engagement’’ or ‘‘non-engage-
ment’’). Other more reoccurring behaviors
(n ¼ 32), such as buying milk in returnable bottles,
were later recoded from a polytomous response
format to a dichotomous one by regarding the
responses ‘‘never,’’ ‘‘seldom,’’ and ‘‘occasionally’’
as rejections (indicating ‘‘unreliable ecological
engagement’’) and ‘‘often’’ and ‘‘always’’ as
confirmations (indicating ‘‘reliable ecological
engagement’’).
The scale calibration was implemented in line
with previous such calibrations using the Rasch
model (for details and fit statistics, see Byrka,
2009). In 2003, the environmental engagement
measure had a separation reliability of r ¼ .71
(N ¼ 1,746). With a time lag of about 24 months,
we reassessed environmental engagement with the
131 persons who came to the laboratory. To avoid
bothering them with too many overlapping ques-
tions, we randomly selected a subset of 20 items for
each participant out of the 50 behaviors previously
employed. Persons with an originally high
environmental engagement level did not receive
extremely easy behaviors, and persons originally
low on environmental engagement did not receive
extremely difficult ones. Such a procedure is
possible due to the technical features of Rasch
models (i.e., uniform item discrimination). Again,
assessing people’s environmental engagement
based on the Rasch model was feasible. Once
more, the engagement measure had a separation
reliability of r ¼ .70 (N ¼ 131). People’s environ-
mental engagement in the two assessments was
highly comparable given the correlation between
ENVIRONMENTALISM AS A TRAIT 75
the two measures of r ¼ .67. When conventionally
corrected for measurement error attenuation, the
correlation coefficient translated into r ¼ .96,
representing an impressive stability across time.
We additionally included a measure of social
value orientation using nine questions containing
three possible response alternatives (see Van
Lange, de Bruin, Otten, & Joireman, 1997). The
three options represent (a) prosocial, (b) indivi-
dualistic, or (c) competitive choices for how a
person agrees to grant credit points to another
person and to himself or herself. A particular value
orientation is assigned when a person prefers the
same type of choice at least six out of nine times.
Of the 131 participants, 113 (86.25%) were
classifiable. The vast majority of our participants
were prosocials (n ¼ 86; 65.64%), with only 27
(20.61%) proselfs (i.e., 18 (13.74%) ‘‘individu-
alists’’ and 9 (6.87%) ‘‘competitors’’). For the
purposes of this study, we collapsed the individu-
alists and competitors into one category, which we
called the proselfs. Note that a person’s social
value orientation and the second assessment of a
person’s environmental engagement (with the
General Ecological Behavior scale) could be
carried out with only the 131 persons who actually
came to the site.
The decision task
The decision task for which people were invited
was a typical commons dilemma game. Each
participant was seated in front of a computer
and was led to believe that four other persons were
simultaneously involved in the game in separate
cubicles (whereas the computer randomly gener-
ated the other four participants’ requests following
a conventional procedure). Each participant
played 10 rounds in the game. Depending on the
experimental condition, half of the participants
requested energy amounts in kW for personal
amenities. The other half of the participants
requested points. The individual pay-off was
determined by the overall group request. If the
total demand exceeded 10 units of the common
resource, no one received anything. If the demand
remained within 10 units of the resource, the
requested amount was granted. Each round was
terminated with feedback concerning the indivi-
dual and the collective pay-offs (for more details,
see Byrka, 2009).
RESULTS
In this research, we expected a person’s propensity
to comply with a request to participate in a
 76 KAISER AND BYRKA
psychological experiment to depend on the extent
of the person’s environmental engagement. Based
on a one-way ANOVA, we found that persons
who actually showed up in 2005 for the experiment
had originally scored higher in environmental
engagement in 2003 (Mshow ¼ .09, SD ¼ 1.00,
n ¼ 131) than the ones who failed to show up
2 years later (Mno-show ¼ .33, SD ¼ .97, n ¼ 303),
F(1, 432) ¼ 17.22, Z2 ¼ .04.
Table 1 reports the numbers of participants with
high and low engagement who participated or did
not participate in the experiment. Of the 131
persons who effectively participated in the experi-
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ment, 57 were high in engagement (40.42% of the
successfully contacted highly engaged persons) and
74 were low in environmental engagement (25.25%
of the successfully contacted lowly engaged per-
sons). As predicted, a person high in environ-
mental engagement was more likely to show up for
the experiment than a person with a comparatively
low engagement, 2(1) ¼ 10.40, 2 ¼ .08.
As this effect was anticipated to reflect people’s
prosocial nature, we also expected to find it
represented in people’s differential prosocial dis-
position, measured with their social value orienta-
tion (Van Lange, 1999). In line with our
expectation, we found all 113 (86.25% of the
sample) classifiable participants who effectively
showed up for the experiment to be more likely to
be prosocials than proselfs (note that 18 persons
were not classifiable).
Among the classifiable persons, we found, as
expected and in line with previous findings
(McClintock & Allison, 1989), relatively more
prosocials than proselfs when comparing persons
high in environmental engagement to persons low
in engagement, 2(1) ¼ 10.15, 2 ¼ .09. Specifically,
the proportion of prosocials (i.e., 90.20%) was
comparatively higher for persons high in
environmental engagement than the 64.52%
prosocials among persons low in environmental
engagement. Conversely, only 9.80% of the persons
high in environmental engagement were proselfs,
35.48% of the ones low in environmental
engagement were proselfs. Employing a one-way
ANOVA, we found also that proselfs
(Mproselfs ¼ .28, SD ¼ .20, n ¼ 27) scored lower in
their environmental engagement than prosocials
(Mprosocials ¼ .40, SD ¼ .12, n ¼ 86), F(1, 111) ¼
7.45, Z2 ¼ .06. Note that this effect held even
when we used people’s environmental engagement
2 years prior to the assessment of their social value
orientation: Again, proselfs (Mproselfs ¼ .38,
SD ¼ .17, n ¼ 27) scored lower in their environ-
mental engagement than prosocials (Mprosocials ¼
.25, SD ¼ .11, n ¼ 86), F(1, 111) ¼ 8.15, Z2 ¼ .07.
TABLE 1
Frequencies of persons with high and low environmental
engagement complying or not complying with a selfless
behavioral response (i.e., participation in a psychological
experiment)
Environmental engagement
Behavioral response High Low
Show 57 (13.13%) 74 (17.05%)
43 (9.81%) 88 (20.37%)
No-show 84 (19.36%) 219 (50.46%)
98 (22.68%) 205 (47.14%)
Relative frequencies are presented in parentheses. In all cells,
the discrepancy between the observed count (italics) and the
expected count (bold face) was significant.
When combined, our results speak of environ-
mental engagement as a sensible indicator of
people’s prosocial propensities. Overall, people’s
differential prosocial personalities seem reflected
in their pro-environmental deeds. Additional
evidence for our claim comes from the experiment
in which the participants partook. The original
purpose of this research was to test the hypothesis
that individual environmental engagement deter-
mines cooperation with others for the greater
collective good in a laboratory commons dilemma
experiment (for more details, see Byrka, 2009).
Specifically, we had anticipated that cooperation
would depend on environmental engagement
provided that the resource was environment-
relevant (e.g., energy). With a planned compar-
ison, the predicted interaction was corroborated:
t(127) ¼ 2.65, Z2 ¼ .05.
As can be seen in Figure 1, if the common
resource meant energy, persons with high levels of
environmental engagement removed less of the
resource than the persons in the other three
conditions combined (those with low levels
of engagement considering either environment-
relevant energy or environment-irrelevant points,
and those with high levels of engagement
considering points). Note that this recognized
interaction does not depend on persons with low
levels of environmental engagement removing an
environment-irrelevant resource (e.g., points).
With a comparison of persons with high levels of
engagement considering an environment-relevant
resource to the remaining two conditions com-
bined (i.e., persons with high levels of engagement
removing an environment-irrelevant resource and
persons with low levels of engagements removing
an environment-relevant resource), the effect
remains statistically significant: t(127) ¼ 1.80,
Z2 ¼ .02.

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Figure 1. Allocation of a common resource (points/energy in
kW) as a function of the environmental relevance of the
common resource and of people’s environmental engagement.
N ¼ 131 (n ¼ 38, n ¼ 29, n ¼ 36, n ¼ 28; from left to right);
vertical bars indicate the 95% confidence intervals.
Another look at Figure 1 makes it obvious that
in addition to the theoretically anticipated and
corroborated interaction, a second effect is appar-
ent in the presented data; this one, however, is a
main effect. People high in environmentalism
generally demanded less and, thus, acted more
cooperatively in the commons dilemmas, regard-
less of the resource the dilemma was about,
t(127) ¼ 3.29, Z2 ¼ .08. In other words, we found
comparatively more cooperation in general, that
is, more prosocial behavior from people high in
environmental engagement irrespective of the
resource that was considered. Note also that
while cooperation in social dilemmas could have
been expected from prosocial individuals, thus far,
differences in environmental engagement have not
been found to be relevant for individual coopera-
tion in laboratory experiments involving resource
dilemmas (see Smith & Bell, 1992).
DISCUSSION
As anticipated, environmentalists were more likely
to volunteer, show up, and actually participate in a
psychological experiment. This finding not only
confirms our hypothesis that a prosocial trait
would be reflected in people’s environmental
engagement, but also has some bearing on how
to promote environmentalism and on how we look
at experimental research in psychology.
As an extension of previous work, we found that
people high in environmental engagement (estab-
lished with a self-report measure of past conserva-
tion behavior; e.g., Kaiser & Wilson, 2004) were
comparatively more likely to participate in a
psychological experiment than people low in
environmental engagement. As indicated by
ENVIRONMENTALISM AS A TRAIT 77
excessive incidence ratios, we found also that
active participants and highly engaged persons
were more likely to be prosocials—measured with
social value orientation (e.g., Van Lange, 1999).
Despite the presented circumstantial evidence,
there is still room for alternative explanations.
Biased subsamples in terms of general intelligence
(indicated by IQ and/or educational level, or by
socioeconomic status), of future-orientation, and
of agreeableness, rather than prosociality are three
candidates that could additionally explain our
findings (as we did not control for these three
variables).
Intelligence is known to be linked with research
participation (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1975), as is
future-orientation (Harber, Zimbardo, & Boyd,
2003). Agreeableness entails a certain prosocial
orientation in individuals (cf. McCrae & Costa,
1999). Previously, it has been found to be
positively related to cooperation in resource
dilemmas (Koole, Jager, van den Berg, Vlek, &
Hofstee, 2001) and to environmentalism (Hirsh
& Dolderman, 2007).
At the same time, our research speaks of two
more issues worth mentioning. First, if environ-
mentalism turns out to be grounded in a compara-
tively durable trait—apparent in its remarkable
stability over 24 months—rather than a more
malleable motive, this finding also cautions against
overly high hopes for moral exhortation in
environmental conservation as a viable means for
effectively changing behavior. In other words, our
findings imply that environmentalism might not be
as malleable in large-scale one-shot interventions
by means of promoting moral norms as conserva-
tion psychologists occasionally seem to believe.
Second, if the reported self-selection bias toward
prosocial individuals can eventually be confirmed
in the social sciences, we may have two rather
fundamental problems: (a) Generalizing findings
of (potentially) prosocially biased samples to the
general population may be unwarranted at times;
and (b) researching prosocial performance in
psychology might be problematic due to sample-
selection-dependent range restrictions in the target
variable.
Four limitations are also worth mentioning as
they may possibly have affected our research and,
thus, seem relevant for our conclusions. First, our
data were originally collected for another purpose
(cf. Byrka, 2009). Thus, our hypothesis was at least
partly inspired by an apparent pattern in some
already available data. In other words, our test
was not truly prospective. Nevertheless, we would
like to stress the convergence of our results with
multiple other findings involving different models,
 78 KAISER AND BYRKA
measures, designs, and samples (e.g., Bamberg &
Möser, 2007; Kaiser, 2006).
Second, financial compensation was granted
for participating in our experiment. Each
participant was offered E6.50 (approx. US$8.50)
at the end of the experiment, which seems to
contradict the subsequent labeling of participation
as a selfless, prosocial behavior. However, because
the extent of the compensation was economically
insufficient to cover expenditure in terms of time
loss and transportation costs, participation in the
experiment remained a comparatively selfless act.
Third, the two subsamples must be regarded as
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biased in terms of age and gender composition—
yet two other alternative explanations of our
findings—and in terms of extremity. While low
environmental engagement meant maximally aver-
age scores, high engagement meant scores mini-
mally one standard deviation above the average.
In other words, low was less low than high was
high. Note that such a reduced and not perfectly
centered gap was actually to our disadvantage as it
created conditions that made it more difficult to
detect differences in the two subsamples.
Fourth, our research design was quasi-experi-
mental. That means participants were not ran-
domly allocated to conditions. Strictly speaking,
such a design does not allow for a conclusive test of
causality (i.e., for the direction of the relationship).
Since we proposed environmental engagement as
an indicator of a person’s overall prosocial disposi-
tion, only a reciprocal relationship and not
causality—between the general disposition and a
specific prosocial behavior—was formally required.
With our research, we demonstrated that
environmentalism can be used to forecast people’s
propensity to act prosocially even outside the
environmental domain and even with specific overt
prosocial actions by cooperating in a commons
dilemma and by participating in a psychological
experiment. Most remarkably, however, our find-
ings speak of environmentalism as a virtue and of
environmentalists as being generally ‘‘better,’’
more prosocially acting persons.
Manuscript received October 2009
Revised manuscript accepted July 2010
First published online November 2010
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