I Can Feel Your Pain: Investigating the Role of Empathy and Guilt on Sustainable Behavioral Intentions to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Plastic Bags among College Students

Plastic bag pollution in the marine environment is an urgent issue that has negatively impacted sustainability of biodiversity. Studying effective ways to design advocacy messages can promote individuals’ intentions reduce, reuse, and recycle plastic bags order mitigate effort help restore biodiversity necessary. Utilizing emotional appeal messages, such as are designed elicit audiences’ feelings empathy, a variety pro-environmental behaviors. To investigate way generate this online experiment study conducted with 257 college students U.S. examined whether encourage perspective-taking successfully empathy among participants. Additionally, explored viewers’ behavioral engage 3Rs (reduce, bags) via mediating roles guilt. Results indicated increase which was positively associated guilt, turn intentions. The also investigated influence self-efficacy on guilt well interaction suggested did not have effect effects were independent each other. These findings demonstrate encouraging affect reduce waste means