“Standing Up for Earth Rights”: Awe-Inspiring Virtual Nature for Promoting Pro-Environmental Behaviors

Virtual nature exposure has emerged as an effective method for promoting pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, also due to the increased emotional connection with nature itself. However, the role played by complex emotions elicited by virtual nature, such as awe, needs to be fully elucidated. Awe is an emotion stemming from vast stimuli, including nature, and virtual reality (VR) emerged as an effective medium to elicit it. One hundred nineteen participants were exposed to either one of four VR environments: (a) an awe-inspiring virtual nature, (b) a non-natural awe-inspiring virtual scenario, (c) a non-awe-inspiring virtual nature, (d) a non-natural non-awe-inspiring scenario. Pro-environmental attitudes, intentions, discrete emotions, and affect were measured and compared across the different conditions. Two ad hoc tasks were developed to measure two pro-environmental behaviors after each VR exposure. Participants were invited to sign a real petition against plastic production, consumption, and in favor of plastic recycling (a personally engaging behavior), and to take flyers to spread the word on the petition to friends and acquaintances (a socially engaging behavior). Awe-inspiring virtual nature resulted in a significantly increased number of flyers taken by participants (vs. control). Disposition toward the protection of the environment, positive emotional affect, and condition significantly correlated with the number of flyers taken. These results indicated that awe-inspiring virtual nature can influence socially engaging pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors but not personally engaging ones.