How does temporal focus affect consumers' pro-environmental intentions?

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how thinking about past or future environmental events and the valence of these events jointly influence consumers' pro-environmental intentions. We hypothesized that people who recall positive (vs. negative) environmental events that happened in the past exhibit heightened pro-environmental intentions; whereas people who foresee negative (vs. positive) environmental events in the future exhibit heightened pro-environmental intentions. These hypotheses were built on moral consistency and moral balancing motivations of consumers. Specifically, when prompted to focus on the past, people are more likely to engage in pro-environmental intentions when they remember positive (vs. negative) past events because they tend to be consistent with the past. In contrast, when prompted to focus on the future, people are more likely to engage in pro-environmental intentions when they forecast negative (vs. positive) future events because they tend to balance initial negative behavior with a more positive subsequent one. We tested these hypotheses in four experiments and discussed their findings and implications.