Mindfulness, self regulation and pro-environmental behaviour

Human responsibility for the environmental crisis has been documented by increasing scientific evidence, and climate change is today a major subject of public concern. Numerous studies have investigated what drives pro-environmental behaviours (i.e. behaviours that seek to minimize the impact of one’s actions on the ecosystem), yet most explanations have been criticised for failing to explain the environmental attitude-behaviour gap. Based on evidence indicating that dispositional mindfulness would predict engagement in pro-environmental behaviour, and findings linking mindfulness to enhanced self-regulation, as well as self-regulation to pro-environmental behaviour, we made the hypothesis that mindfulness could contribute to explain why some people seem more likely to behave coherently with their attitudes towards the environmental crisis. To test this assumption, we carried out two correlational studies. The first one assessed, through an online survey (n=228), whether mindfulness would affect the relationship between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. Our results indicate that Acting with Awareness and Nonjudging would moderate the effects of pro-environmental attitudes on behaviours, suggesting that increased self-regulation abilities may participate to explain the positive correlation found between mindfulness and pro-environmental engagement. The second study (n=262) assessed whether mindfulness would contribute to explain individuals’ emotional response to the climate crisis and their likelihood to embrace an adaptive coping strategy. Our findings show that mindfulness would predict lower climate change anxiety and would moderate the relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environmental behaviour, suggesting that mindfulness may make individuals more prone to adopt an adaptive coping strategy facing the climate change threat.