How Facebook Use Affects Pro-environmental Behaviors: An extension of the dual-pathway model

• Main Authors: Chen, Wen-Wei, 陳雯維
• Other Authors: Shih, Tsung-Jen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/yxgz25

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 國際傳播英語碩士學位學程(IMICS) === 106 === Climate change is regarded as a disadvantage to humanity, requiring collective action to mitigate its negative impacts. The study applied the dual pathway model, which focuses on the role of negative emotion and collective efficacy, to investigate how people appraise information before deciding to take pro-environmental action. Because of the new research findings and the advent of new communication technologies, such as social networking sites (SNSs), the study examined the impact of Facebook use and the effect of positive emotion, and proposed another modified model to investigate the relationship between SNSs, coping mechanism and pro-environmental behaviors to make the model more complete. Drawing upon online survey data from people in Taiwan (N=1000), the results indicated that Facebook use had an indirect effect on pro-environmental behavior through self-relevance, worry and group efficacy. Additionally, the study found that Facebook use can trigger worry and group efficacy directly, thus implying that self-relevance was not necessarily a precursor for subsequent coping mechanisms, as the dual-pathway model suggested. Implications of the findings were discussed.