Happiness and pro-environmental consumption behaviors

2.1 Proenvironmental consumption behavior

PECBs can be referred to as different terms including environmentally responsible behaviors such as green consumption (Peattie, 2010), sustainable consumption (Cohen, 2001), environmentally significant consumption (Stern, 2000), mindful consumption (Sheth et al., 2011). In general, these behaviors generally minimize damages to the environment (Steg and Vlek, 2009). Examples of PECB can include purchasing an energy-efficient household appliances (a hybrid car, an energy-efficient air conditioner), installing to a renewable energy supplier (Lavelle et al., 2015), buying organic food, avoiding heavily packaged products, recycling food containers or avoiding single-use plastic products (Lavelle et al., 2015; Casaló et al., 2019).

Existing literature has commonly suggested that individuals are likely encouraged to conduct PECBs by some influential factors. Some individual factors that may influence PECB include knowledge and education, personality and self-construal, sense of control, values while social factors consist of social norms, social class and culture (Gifford and Nilsson, 2014). Besides, consumers are inclined to conduct PECB when they are provided with necessary facilitating conditions such as green product availability and perceived consumer effectiveness (Nguyen et al., 2019; Lin and Huang, 2012); reasonable price or monetary incentives (Lin and Huang, 2012; Biswas and Roy, 2015). Additionally, a growing number of studies have pointed out that when given substantial information about green products or behaviors (Burke et al., 2014) or point-of-sale information related to proenvironmental products (Frank and Brock, 2018), consumers are more likely to internalize environmental messages and make green choices, accordingly.

2.2 Subjective well-being

Since ancient times, individuals, local communities, subcultures and nations have all been interested in pursuing happiness, life satisfaction or well-being. Therefore, the issue related to well-being has sparked a lot of discussion throughout history. Being a commonly accepted concept, well-being is a multifaceted notion encompassing different dimensions of human functioning (McGillivray, 2007). Well-being is arguably best defined by Beddington et al. (2008) to be a state in which an individual can reach their full potential, work productively and creatively, form strong and positive interpersonal relationships and contribute to their community.

While well-being can be categorized differently, researchers seem to agree that it would be more feasible to evaluate subjective well-being. In fact, SWB refers to the individuals' self-reported evaluation of their own well-being (Diener, 1984). Accordingly, SWB denotes people's own evaluations and appraisals of their own lives, including cognitive judgments and emotional responses to ongoing life (Diener et al., 2018; Martín-María et al., 2017). Accordingly, SWB is supposed to involve positive functioning in terms of two underlying dimensions of psychological and social well-being. First, PWB, also referred to as eudaimonic well-being, is achieved through self-acceptance, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth (Diener, 1984; Ryff and Keyes, 1995). Second, social well-being is primarily concerned about individuals' perceptions of their relationships with others in the surrounding environment (Prati et al., 2017; Ryff and Keyes, 1995).

Recent research tendency has turned to understand the impacts of SWB on people's life in a wide variety of life domains. Evidently, a large body of existing literature has documented numerous benefits of SWB on both individuals and the society. Generally, people with higher levels of SWB are found to be motivated to participate in certain behaviors or activities (Diener et al., 2018). More specifically, most research agrees that people with higher levels of SWB tend to lead a healthier life (Pressman and Cohen, 2005) or live longer (Diener and Chan, 2011). Empirical evidence also supports the view that higher levels of SWB tend to make individuals more sociable, have more supportive relationships with surrounding people in their communities and work more productively (De Neve et al., 2013). Besides, it has also been shown by other research findings that happy people are more likely to care for others or for the community and therefore, tend to participate in doing actions that are beneficial for the society, such as doing charity or volunteering (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Oishi et al., 2007). It is logical then to link SWB to PECB, which is an individual choice for the sake of not only the consumers but also for other people in the society and for the environment as well (Steg and Vlek, 2009).

As mentioned above, SWB comprises emotional well-being and positive functioning (Diener, 1984; Ryff and Keyes, 1995), in this research, we choose to examine how each underlying dimension of SWB, PWB or social well-being, influences PECB separately.

2.3 Psychological well-being and proenvironmental consumption behaviors

PWB is concerned with eudaimonic well-being, which is defined as the achievement of one's full potential and living a meaningful life (Chen et al., 2013). With a high level of PWB, individuals tend to positively evaluate their own capacity to manage their life and surrounding world effectively, pursue a purposeful and meaningful goals in life, grow and develop as a person and develop a sense of autonomy in what they do (Ryff and Keyes, 1995; Ryff and Singer, 2008; Ryff, 1989). In this paper, we argue that PWB may result in PECB. This is because having higher levels of eudaimonic well-being (i.e. PWB), individuals are more likely to make investment in terms of time and effort to set and pursue more intrinsic and nonmaterialistic goals such as environmental protection (Prati et al., 2017). Normally, individuals tend to engage in their behavior through goal setting (DuBrin, 2012; Consolvo et al., 2009). Individuals' attention is guided toward goal-related activities as a result of goal setting, which generates obligations and intentions to achieve a goal or desired behavior (Miner, 2005). When it comes to PECB, existing literature has witnessed goal setting as an effective strategy in encouraging proenvironmental behavior. To put it in another way, when people perceive themselves to be happy, they will make efforts to pursue meaning in life and contribute to the society by conducting PECB. A meta-analysis into factors that can promote proenvironmental behaviors has confirmed that goal setting is among one of the most effective interventions to encourage proenvironmental behaviors (Osbaldiston and Schott, 2011). Therefore, compared to individuals with lower levels of PWB, those with higher levels of PWB tend to set such nonmaterialistic goals, which are beyond their personal fulfillment and find it easier to pursue these goals and satisfy their purpose in life.

Empirically, goal setting is one of influential factors leading to a reduction in electricity consumption (Abrahamse et al., 2005). More recently, findings of a study state that setting goals will increase proenvironmental behaviors such as reducing the use of disposable dishes, carrying a water bottle when away from home instead of using single-use plastic ones (Staples et al., 2020).

Additionally, the guiding role of PWB for sustainable behaviors has also been supported by previous studies. For example, happy people who set clear goals and pursue a meaning in life are more inclined to conduct behaviors that do less harm to the environment such as lower ecological footprint or less frequent car use (Csutora and Zsóka, 2012). Besides, research has found that individuals, whose needs for personal growth, self-acceptance or their intrinsic life goals are satisfied, are more inclined to engage in environmentally friendly behavior such as cycling or recycling (Kasser and Sheldon, 2002). Furthermore, Ganglmair-Wooliscroft and Wooliscroft (2019) have also reported eudaimonic well-being to have a positive correlation with everyday ethical consumption behaviors such as recycling or buying local products.

For the above arguments and empirical evidence, we formally hypothesize:

2.4 Social well-being and PECB

Theoretically, social well-being refers to how individuals perceive their relationships with others in the surrounding environment (Ryff and Keyes, 1995; Prati et al., 2017) and how individuals thrive in their own public, social life (Keyes, 2002, 2003). As such, social well-being is proposed to be an important predictor of proenvironmental behavior because it refers to the sense of belonging to the community, doing things that are beneficial for others and for the society (Prati et al., 2017). Kasser (2017) also supports the view that people with high levels of social well-being tend to have high prosocial orientation.

Therefore, evidence for the relationship between social well-being and PECB, thus, can be found in prosocial behavior-related research. With regard to the PECB literature, doing things for the benefits of others and for the benefit of the ecosystem is proposed to result in proenvironmental behavior (De Groot and Steg, 2009). More specifically, PECB is empirically proved to be promoted by prosocial motivation because prosocially motivated people tend to satisfy their innate psychological need to connect with and care for other members in the society (Pham et al., 2021). Empirically, it has been found that social well-being can lead to participation in prosocial behaviors, which are related to PECB such as environmentally responsible clothing (Reimeirs et al., 2017), energy conservation (Prati et al., 2017), paying high prices for environmentally friendly products or refusing to use products that are potentially harmful for the environment (Wang and Kang, 2019). For the above arguments and evidence, we can expect social well-being would influence PECB. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

2.5 The moderating effects in the relationship between subjective well-being and PECB

When it comes to environmental messages, the diffusion of negative messages about environmental damages on media channels has been reported to discourage people's participation in green behaviors (Li et al., 2018). In contrast, information about green behaviors such as energy saving or other proenvironmental consumption alternatives spread through media channels, including social network, is confirmed to attract more proenvironmental behaviors (Li et al., 2019; Tong et al., 2020). This research focuses on positive messages or information about green behaviors, green alternatives or choice of PECB that are communicated and spread on different types of media such as TV, newspapers, the Internet and social networking sites. In this paper, we propose that the frequency of exposure to positive environmental messages on media to be one such condition, which can encourage PECB among people with high levels of SWB.

Firstly, people with high PWB tend to positively assess their own ability to manage life effectively, be able to set a purpose in their life, grow and develop as a person and develop a sense of autonomy. They will make efforts to pursue meaning in life and contribute to the society by conducting PECB (Prati et al., 2017). When these people are exposed to positive environmental messages on mass media, they are more likely to conduct PECB. The first reason is that media is a vital source of environmental information, which can increase individuals' awareness of benefits of PECB and recommend alternatives of PECB (Olausson, 2011; Nisbet, 2009). When individuals are frequently exposed to positive environmental messages about “green choices” on media channels, they are more confident in evaluating their ability to pursue a purposeful goal in their life (Arlt et al., 2011; Östman, 2014). Second, being more frequently exposed to messages about green behaviors on different media channels, they can be provided with sustainable tourism choices (Hardeman et al., 2017) or environmentally friendly consumer food choices (Simeone and Scarpato, 2020). Thanks to this, they can establish a certain level of autonomy and can more easily choose relevant behaviors to help them attain their goals, thereby enhancing their level of PWB. From those reasonings, frequent exposure to environmental messages on mass media has activated psychological social well-being, which will inherently promote PECB. Therefore, exposure to positive environmental messages on mass media can reinforce the impacts that PWB has on PECB.

Hence, the following hypothesis is posited:

Secondly, we argue that individuals who have both high levels of social well-being and high frequency of exposing to environmental messages on mass media channels would be more likely to perform PECB. First, as previously discussed, individuals with high levels of social well-being tend to pay attention to information related to and/or from others in their social community in light of benefits for others (Keyes, 1998). They are more likely to perceive that their PECB is valued by the society and can contribute to the common good of the whole society. Hence, the perception of having a strong relationship with other people in their community can enhance their level of social well-being, thereby motivating them to conduct more PECB. Second, people with high levels of social well-being are likely to have prosocial orientations (Feng and Zhang, 2021) and are motivated to conduct PECB for the welfare of other people of the natural environment (Wang and Kang, 2019). When these people are frequently exposed to positive environmental messages on mass media channels, they will become aware of tips, best practices and suggestions of proenvironmental alternatives of consumption behaviors, which are usually referred to as a prosocial message (Rushton, 1982). Repeated exposure to prosocial media may even further enhance prosocial motivation (Neubaum et al., 2020), which will evidently activate a higher level of social well-being. Concluding from those arguments, high frequency of exposure to environmental messages on media channels would be associated with a stronger impact of social well-being on PECB. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

The study framework is demonstrated in Figure 1 below.

3.1 Participants

Participants of this research were adults living in Vietnam, aged from 18 to over 55. The research survey questionnaires were distributed electronically to members of a wide variety of green communities or proenvironmental communities. These communities are online based in Facebook groups among Vietnamese members. These groups normally share green ideas or practices or examples of daily PECB to each other such as how to reduce single-use plastics, where to buy organic food, tips of electricity and water conservation, recycling ideas and so on. The survey questionnaires were posted on these communities in one week in October 2020, and 378 valid responses were collected for further analysis to test the proposed relationships in the theoretical framework.

3.2 Measures

Measures of SWB (both psychological well-being and social well-being) were adapted from the study of Pontin et al. (2013). Exposure to environmental messages on media was measured based on the measurement scales adapted from Lee (2010) regarding the frequency of getting exposure to environmental messages on TV, newspapers, the Internet and social networking sites. With the Facebook group respondents, the messages received are usually about environmental-friendly behaviors or campaigns carried out in societies. Finally, PECB was assessed by modifying the measurement scales of Taufique et al. (2014), which were about environmentally responsible consumer behaviors. All variables were measured using the multi-item Likert-type scales from 1 as Strongly Disagree to 5 as Strongly Agree.

4.1 Sample profile

The profile of the sample reveals that 59.3% were females compared to 40.7% of males; 52.9% of the participants were between 18 and 45 years old while 32.5% of them were from 46 to 55 years old; And 14.6% of the participants were over 55 years old.

4.2 Reliability and validity analysis

Two statistical tools of SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 20.0 were used to test reliability, validity and discriminant validity of the scales. All scales, except for the measurement scale of exposure to environmental messages on media – a formative scale, were subject to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) suggested that these measurement scales (PWB, social well-being, PECB) had a unidimensional structure. Cronbach's α for these constructs variables were all above 0.8, ranging from 0.846 to 0.911, which indicates good internal consistency (see Table 1).

To assess the convergent validity of all constructs, the average variance extracted (AVE) scores were computed. Factor loadings of these constructs are all higher than 0.5 while all AVE scores were greater than 0.50, demonstrating acceptable convergent validity (Hair et al., 2018). Additionally, the AVE score for each construct was greater than its correlation with the other constructs, demonstrating discriminant validities of the measures (Fornell and Larcker, 1981) (see Table 1).

4.3 Hypothesis testing

The statistical tool of WarpPLS 7.0 was applied to test the hypothesized relationships. Two control variables of Gender and Age were also included in the model. Table 2 presents a summary of the hypothesis testing results.

As can be seen from Table 2, both Average Block VIF and the Average Full Collinearity VIF are smaller than the cutoff value of 3.33, demonstrating no collinearity problem. Independent variables in the model explained 59% of the variance in PECB variable. The estimates for the direct relationship between PWB and social well-being and PECB were 0.505 and 0.291, respectively with p values lower than 0.001. H1 and H2 then are supported.

In testing for moderation, the interaction term between PWB and exposure to environmental messages on media has a significant positive impact on PECB. Thus exposure to environmental messages has a positive complete moderating effect on the relationship between PWB and PECB. H3 then is supported.

However, the interaction term between social well-being and exposure to environmental messages on media is positive but not significant. H4 then is not supported.

5.1 Theoretical implication

Overall, our findings confirm that besides the effects of general SWB on the engagement in PECB indicated by existing literature, each underlying dimension of SWB, PWB or social well-being also has a separate positive relationship with PECB. This is consistent with explanation for the positive association between these two dimensions and PECB (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005). First, it is found in our research that the significant impact that PWB has on PECB corroborates with previous studies about the important role pursing a meaningful purpose in life plays in promoting general behaviors (DuBrin, 2012; Consolvo et al., 2009) and proenvironmental behaviors (Osbaldiston and Schott, 2011; Staples et al., 2020). Second, our research indicates that people with higher levels of social well-being tend to participate in PECB because they are more concerned about their relationships with others in the community. This is also in line with arguments and empirical evidence from previous studies (Reimeirs et al., 2017; Prati et al., 2017). Furthermore, our findings found that exposure to positive environmental behavior messages on media channels facilitates the impact of PWB on PECB. With frequent exposure to environmental messages on mass media, individuals are more capable of satisfying their need for self-acceptance, self-autonomy and effective development and growth as a person in life. As a result, the impacts of PWB on PECB are further strengthened.

However, contrary to what was hypothesized, exposure to environmental messages on media channels is not found to moderate the relationship between social well-being and PECB. Explanations for this may originate from contrasting points of view among people with high levels of social well-being. One possible reason for this may be the “Bystander Effect” (Latane and Darly, 1970). This is a concept from the lens of social psychology, explaining why people are reluctant or less likely to help someone in a needed situation if there are other people around. There are four major components of the bystander effect, namely self-awareness, social cues, blocking mechanisms and distributed responsibility. The concept of bystander effect can be used to explain situations related to social media exposure and proenvironmental behaviors as well. That is, when these people are frequently exposed to environmental messages on media, they tend to believe that there are many other people who have already conducted or will be conducting PECB for the welfare of the environment. Accordingly, they may sometimes relax themselves and do not suppress their personal interest for some occasional consumption behaviors that are not environmentally friendly. This further corroborates with the view that a helping behavior such as a proenvironmental behavior is sometimes less likely to occur when people recognize others who will potentially conduct the desired behavior (Granzin and Olson, 1991).

5.2 Practical implications

The current study also offers some practical implications to encourage more participation in PECBs in people's daily lives. As indicated from the research findings, those who are typically happy with their life tend to participate more in PECB. Accordingly, policymakers should consider policies that can directly improve levels of well-being among citizens. In order to do so, governmental agencies should develop programs to evaluate what are the indicators of life satisfaction of citizens. Based on that, specific measures can be taken to decrease depression and anxiety levels and increase satisfaction levels of citizens.

Second, for citizens who choose to lead a sustainable lifestyle, communication campaigns to promote more PECB should provide viewers with positive emotions, such as being cheerful, hopeful or motivational instead of providing negative ones such as guilt, anger, disappointment or threats. Besides, intervention campaigns should also emphasize that those behaviors are not only beneficial for other people in the society, beneficial for the environment but also beneficial for themselves because they can make them feel an inner happiness because of being able to set and achieve meaningful purposes in life. More importantly, these behaviors could be a chance for them to benefit from psychological gains from being a member of a righteous community. Being a member in such a community, they can be happy with relationships with each other, feel a sense of belonging to the community and experience community participation at the same time.

5.3 Limitation and further research

This research is not without limitation. Firstly, the data for the study were collected from members of Facebook groups who focus on green consumption and proenvironmental activities in Vietnam. These groups often publish posts about ideas, recommendations or tips about alternatives that are environmentally friendly so that other members can follow such green practices to be beneficial for the nature. When they are asked about the frequency of their exposure to general environmental messages, it is evidently implied that these messages are suggested ideas about daily PECB. Therefore findings may be not generalized for those who may not belong to these groups. Future research, however, may look into the impacts of exposure to other different types of environmental information on the relationship between different dimensions of SWB and PECB and among other general samples. Second, the self-reported PECB used in this research may not exactly assess the participants' actual pattern of behaviors. Although respondents were asked to recall their actual participation in PECB in their daily life activities, responses may not be considered as actual behaviors. Future research would benefit from the examination of another research design such as longitudinal experiments.

5.4 Conclusion and future research direction

To wrap up, our study findings first contribute to existing well-being literature by indicating that SWB can separately influence PECB in two separate dimensions: PWB and social well-being. Second, our results also extend a larger body of literature on prosocial media effects (Li et al., 2018, 2019; Neubaum et al., 2020). In fact, our study confirms the different roles that exposure to positive environmental messages on media play in the relationship between different dimensions of SWB and proenvironmental consumption behavior.

Future research then may look into the impacts of exposure to other different types of environmental information on the relationship between different dimensions of SWB and PECB and among other general samples. Second, to tackle the limitation of using a self-reported measurement scale for PECB, future research would benefit from the examination of another research design such as longitudinal experiments.