Religious Stewardship and Pro-Environmental Action: The Mediating Roles of Environmental Guilt and Anger

Past research has found that stewardship belief can motivate pro-environmentalism among religious individuals. The present study investigates the emotional pathways linking religious stewardship belief and pro-environmental policy support. In an online experiment conducted with Christians in the United States (N = 604), we experimentally primed stewardship belief (N = 195) using a video that highlighted the human responsibility to care for God’s creations. We also included a control condition (N = 206) and a religion condition (N = 203), which presented a more generic religious message. As demonstrated in a mediation model, the stewardship manipulation (vs. control condition) increased feelings of guilt and anger toward environmental issues, which in turn increased support for pro-environmental policies (i.e., behavioral outcome of petition signing). Based on bootstrapped confidence intervals, the indirect effects of the stewardship prime on environmental policy support via guilt and anger were significant. In contrast, the religion condition had no significant effect on policy support. These findings contribute to explaining how religious people, tasked with the duty of stewardship, may be emotionally driven to engage with environmental issues.