Toward an integrated approach to environmental and prosocial education

Environmental education programs neglect the aspect of prosocial behavior as a correlate of pro-environmental behavior. This article examines the possible benefits of increasing the emphasis on prosocial behavior as a way to reinforce environmental education. In our study, prosocial behavior was positively related to pro-environmental behavior (r = 0.34, p < 0.001), and even a combined scale consisting of prosocial and pro-environmental behavior items showed an acceptable reliability (separation reliability = 0.82, at the level of the separated scales), which implies that prosocial and pro-environmental behaviors are a similar class of behavior. We can assume that the two underlying propensities (prosocial behavior and pro-environmentalism) are probably only two facets of an overarching common propensity that supports both kinds of behavior. Therefore, promoting one facet will, through its relationship with the other facet, also foster the respective other facet. Even more so, it might be most effective to relate to both propensities equally.