What predicts environmental activism? The roles of identification with nature and politicized environmental identity

Abstract Abundant evidence suggests that pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is promoted by a subjective sense of oneness with nature—what we conceptualize as “identification with nature.” For environmental activist behaviour, however, we hypothesize that a stronger, more direct predictor is “politicized environmental identification”—identification with a group that is engaged in a collective struggle to create pro-environmental social change. Furthermore, we predicted that politicized identification would mediate an indirect relationship between identification with nature and environmental activism. Cross-sectional evidence for these predictions was found in Studies 1 and 2. In Study 3, a longitudinal study, change in politicized environmental identification over a three-month period predicted change in activist PEB, but change in identification with nature did not. Overall results suggest that politicized environmental identification is a proximal predictor of activism that warrants increased attention in theory, research and interventions aimed at motivating PEB.