The influence of scarcity perception on people's pro-environmental behavior and their readiness to accept new sustainable technologies
通过在线调查（N=404）发现，人们对未来资源稀缺的预期比当前资源感知更能预测亲环境行为，且稀缺感知会提升对可持续能源和食品技术的接受度。
Experts worldwide point to the challenges our world is facing (e.g., land degradation , resource scarcity, global warming) as described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . Many studies have analyzed how to cope with these challenges. Aside from promoting pro-environmental behaviors, it was proposed that technological innovations might provide the potential to cope with and compensate for natural resource scarcity. We conducted an online survey ( N = 404) investigating how people's scarcity perception is related to their willingness to adopt pro-environmental behaviors and their openness to new sustainable technologies. Regression analyses demonstrate that the anticipated future unavailability of resources is more crucial for predicting pro-environmental behavior than the perceived current resource availability. The expected reduced future availability of natural resources goes along with increased openness to sustainable energy ( r energy = −0.32) and food technologies ( r food = −0.22). Moreover, a t -test provides evidence for the causal influence of scarcity perception by showing that pro-environmental behavior was higher following our scarcity salience manipulation (Cohen's d = 0.27). Further bootstrapping analyses showed that the salience affected individuals' technology openness via pro-environmental behavior. Also, pro-environmental behavior and openness to sustainable food and energy technologies were amplified when people believed that fewer resources will be available due to an increased concern about scarcity.