Important to me and my society: How culture influences the roles of personal values and perceived group values in environmental engagements via collectivistic orientation

Despite extensive works examining the influence of personal values on environmental engagements, scarce research has examined the influence of group values that are perceived as important in the society. To address this lacuna and recent calls for more cross-cultural environmental research, we investigated whether and how culture, via collectivistic orientation, influences the roles of personal values and perceived group values, namely egoistic and biospheric values, in motivating environmental engagements in a Western (the U.S.; N = 469) and an Asian (Singapore; N = 410) country. To highlight a few findings, the study showed that personal values and perceived group values differentially predicted environmental engagements. Counter to our hypotheses, biospheric group values discouraged environmental volunteerism and were not related to other environmental engagement measures. Interestingly, culturally shaped collectivistic orientation attenuated biospheric group values' negative relationship and strengthened egoistic group values’ positive relationship with public behavioral intentions. Collectivistic orientation also strengthened the positive influence of personal egoistic values, but not personal biospheric values, on public behavioral intentions and policy support. We discuss how these findings advance knowledge regarding the ways in which personal and perceived group values, coupled with culturally motivated collectivistic orientation, would encourage pro-environmental actions.