Background: Pro-environmental behavior necessitates individuals to make personal sacrifices, such as spending more money on environmentally-friendly products to benefit the environment. Realistically, individuals may not be willing to engage in pro-environmental behavior based self-interest. The increase in personal pro-environmental behavior has become an urgent issue in the field of environmental psychology. Purpose: The present study adopted green consumption paradigm to explore the internal mechanisms of pro-environmental behavior at different personal costs, the role of social and personal norms on pro-environmental behavior, which can promote individual pro-environmental behavior. Methods: In our experiment, participants first were instructed to read texts unrelated and related to social norms in sequence. Participants subsequently completed the product choice task, which involved making choices between buying green (eco-friendly) products or cheaper (self-interested) common products, a method to measure pro-environment behavior. Finally, the participants completed the personal norms scale and social norms check. Results: The findings of present study indicated that pro-environmental behavior decreased as personal costs increased. However, social norms effectively promoted individuals’ pro-environmental behavior, and personal norms played a mediating role at high personal costs. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that individuals tend to choose cheaper common products that are harmful to the natural environment in self-interest. However, we discuss the implications for the use of social norms as a social marketing technique, which extends the Norm Activation Model.

The present study investigated neural correlations underlying the psychological processing of stimuli with various degrees of self-relevance. Event-related potentials were recorded for names that differ in their extent of relevance to the study participant. Participants performed a three-stimulus oddball task. ERP results showed larger P2 averaged amplitudes for highly self-relevant names than for moderately self-relevant, minimally self-relevant, and non-self-relevant names. N2 averaged amplitudes were larger for the highly self-relevant names than for the moderately self-relevant, minimally self-relevant, and non-self-relevant names. Highly self-relevant names elicited larger P3 averaged amplitudes than the moderately self-relevant names which, in turn, had larger P3 values than for minimally self-relevant names. Minimally self-relevant stimuli elicited larger P3 averaged amplitudes than non-self-relevant stimuli. These results demonstrate a degree effect of self-reference, which was indexed using electrophysiological activity.

Objectives: Participation in mass sports is one of the most efficient strategies for people to attain physical and mental health in China. Prosocial behavior has a positive effect on social development. This study developed a conceptual model with mass sports activity as the independent variable, prosocial behavior as the dependent variable, and flow trait and subjective wellbeing as the mediating variables.Methods: Participants (N= 351) completed an online survey. Mass sports activity, flow trait, subjective wellbeing, and prosocial behavior were measured using the physical activity rank scale-3 (PARS-3), short dispositional flow scale (SDFS), index of wellbeing (IWB), and prosocial tendencies measure (PTM), respectively. Descriptive statistics compared differences between sports population (PARS-3, ≥ 36) and non-sports population (PARS-3, <36). Mediation effect was analyzed using the PROCESS (Template, Model 6).Results: Sports population scored significantly higher (allP≤ 0.05) on SDFS, IWB, and PTM than non-sports population. Participation in mass sports stimulated flow trait and thus improved prosocial behavior, with a mediation effect value of 0.061 (95%CI, 0.028–0.104), which accounted for 30.18% of the total effect. Participation in mass sports enhanced subjective wellbeing and thus improved prosocial behavior, with a mediation effect value of 0.044 (95%CI, 0.007–0.090), which accounted for 21.96% of the total effect. Flow trait and subjective wellbeing mediated the relationship between mass sports activity and prosocial behavior in a sequential manner, with a mediation effect value of 0.059 (95%CI, 0.035–0.090), which accounted for 29.23% of the total effect.Conclusion: The preliminary results of the mediation model validated the hypothesized sequential links between mass sports activity, flow trait, subjective wellbeing, and prosocial behavior. Greater participation in mass sports increases the likelihood of prosocial behavior.