Investigating the relationship between the moral intuitions and pro-environmental behavior in Türkiye

Given the accelerating global climate change and biodiversity crises, the need for pro-environmental action continues to grow. While both individual and governmental action are crucial for addressing these challenges, the moral underpinnings of individual pro-environmental behavior has been receiving increasing attention recently. Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) is an empirical method based on surveys to assess moral intuitions of individuals in different policy-relevant contexts such as political ideology, voting behavior, and recently, pro-environmental behavior (PEB). However, so far, studies have been mainly carried out in high-income countries where options for environmentally-friendly behavior are supported by governments. The present study aims to uncover how moral intuitions, as assessed within the MFT, predict individual PEB based on an online survey conducted with 502 respondents in Türkiye. The survey includes specific modules on the Moral Foundations Questionnaire-2 (care, equality, proportionality, loyalty, authority, purity), political orientation, PEB and socio-demographics. Findings indicate that care, equality and purity foundations positively predicted PEB, without any mediating role of political orientation for the sample at hand. The absence of any influence of political orientation on PEB may be related to the relatively little public polarization with respect to climate change in Türkiye, in contrast to the US samples, for instance. The results of the study contribute to environmental psychology and policy literatures by widening the geographical coverage of PEB and morality studies and providing a baseline for evaluating and enhancing pro-environmental behavior in middle-income, developing country contexts such as Türkiye.