Recent research suggests that people who naturally have high levels of self-control tend to develop more environmentally friendly habits over time. However, short-term changes in a person’s willpower do not directly lead to greener choices. These findings provide evidence that facilitating sustainable choices may be a more effective way to encourage green habits than relying on personal discipline. This research Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Scientists conducted this study to better understand the psychological characteristics that drive people to protect the environment. Environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss require immediate action by the public. Actions that reduce a person’s negative impact on the earth are known as pro-environmental actions. Taking these actions often requires ignoring immediate convenience in favor of long-term environmental goals.
Pursuing these long-term goals requires some level of self-regulation. Self-control is a specific and essential type of self-regulation. It involves managing internal reactions, delaying gratification, and resisting unwanted behavioral impulses. Previous research suggests that people with high self-control tend to behave more sustainably because they are able to keep long-term goals in mind.
“This idea first came to me in a very ordinary moment,” said Jingguan Li, a psychology professor at China’s Dali University. “I had just finished a bottle of water and couldn’t find a recycling bin. I was tempted to simply throw it away, but instead I held onto it until I found a suitable place to dispose of it.”
“Seeing that little inner struggle made me curious. Are people with strong self-control naturally more likely to make environmentally friendly choices in their daily lives?” Lee said. His lab was already studying self-control, and making connections to everyday environmental behavior was a natural extension of that research.
Most previous studies on this topic relied on cross-sectional designs. Cross-sectional research studies a group of people at a single point in time, similar to photography. This makes it difficult to know the exact direction of the relationship between variables.
“Previous research has found that people with more self-control report more sustainable habits, but most of that evidence comes from cross-sectional surveys or single snapshots in time,” Lee told PsyPost. “That leaves a critical ambiguity: Does this association simply reflect stable differences between people, or can real changes in self-control actually cause changes in behavior?”
This single-snapshot approach also leaves room for research bias. “Because self-control and pro-environmental behavior are both socially valued traits, respondents who fill out one-time surveys tend to paint a consistently positive picture of themselves,” Lee said. “If we rate ourselves as very disciplined, we often have no choice but to rate ourselves as environmentally conscious.”
This bias can artificially inflate the correlation and make the two traits appear more closely related than they actually are in everyday life. “To avoid both problems, we followed the same participants at multiple time points,” Lee said. “Spacing out the measurements helps distinguish between genuine directional effects and the bias of wanting to look virtuous by just sitting all at once.”
Longitudinal studies follow the exact same individuals over multiple time points. This allows scientists to see how changes in one trait predict changes in another trait over months or years. The researchers specifically chose to study adolescents and young adults. Late adolescence and early adulthood are periods when individuals are still developing self-regulatory abilities and forming long-term environmental habits.
In the first study, researchers recruited 221 high school students from public schools in China. The sample included approximately 66 percent girls, with an average age of approximately 16 years. The researchers evaluated the students twice, with a full year passing between the first and second evaluations. During each wave, students completed paper questionnaires in the classroom under the supervision of a research assistant.
To measure self-control, scientists used a 13-item questionnaire. Students rated statements about their ability to resist temptation and their tendency to think before acting. To measure environmentally friendly behavior, students rated how often they had participated in specific environmental activities over the past 12 months. These activities include recycling cans, saving energy at home, and purchasing products in reusable containers.
When analyzing the data, the scientists used a statistical method called a cross-lagged panel model. This method examines how a variable at a first time predicts another variable at a second time. The results of this first study showed that increased self-control at the beginning of the year predicted increased pro-environmental behavior by the end of the year.
The researchers conducted a second study to extend these findings using a larger sample and longer time period. The second study involved 1,286 undergraduate students from a single Chinese university. This group was approximately 63% female and the average age was approximately 19 years. Rather than just two check-ins, the researchers tracked these students across three different waves, with exactly one year between each wave.
Because the study spanned three full years, the scientists were able to use a more advanced statistical tool called a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model. This advanced statistical model separates survey data into two distinct mathematical layers. The first layer looks at stable differences between different people. The second layer focuses on temporal fluctuations within the exact same person.
Separating these layers helps scientists avoid confusing stable personality traits with temporary mental states. The researchers found a positive association between the two factors at a stable trait-like level. Individuals who consistently demonstrated higher self-control compared to their peers also consistently reported more sustainable behaviors. This suggests that self-control is a stable personal characteristic that is strongly associated with living a greener lifestyle.
At the variable individual level, the data showed a different pattern. Even if a particular student experienced a typical natural decline or increase in self-control, it did not predict subsequent sustainable habit changes. This suggests that year-to-year changes in a person’s willpower do not directly cause short-term changes in how they treat the environment.
“We were really surprised that we found this in the same person over such a long period of time,” Lee said. “Initially, we thought that if someone’s self-control improved, their pro-environmental behavior would improve as well. However, when we followed the same people over multiple waves, natural fluctuations in self-control simply did not translate into meaningful changes in pro-environmental behavior.”
“This relationship is firmly rooted in stable, long-term trait differences,” Lee continued. “This highlights that promoting sustainability requires more than just telling people to ‘do more.’ We need to build habits and create environments that make it easy to make green choices.”
The results provide evidence that having greener habits is part of an overall lifestyle, rather than a temporary mood. “The main message is that the relationship between self-control and pro-environmental behavior is primarily a stable trait-level pattern. People who are generally more self-controlled also tend to live more sustainable lives over time,” Lee said. “However, when we tracked the same individuals over multiple waves, we found that short-term ups and downs in their self-control did not reliably result in immediate changes in their environmental habits.”
“So it’s not about momentary heroic bursts of willpower, it’s about who the average person is over the long term,” Lee added. “That distinction is important in everyday life. Sustainable living is actually a marathon built of countless small decisions like turning off the lights, carrying a reusable bag, and separating the trash, which add up over months and years.”
This highlights the need for structural changes that facilitate sustainable choices for everyone. “If you rely on asking people to ‘do more’ every time, you’re fighting an uphill battle with human nature,” Lee said. “A smarter approach is to reduce the demand for self-control itself. Placing reminder stickers near light switches, placing recycling bins in convenient locations, and sharing monthly electricity and water usage feedback with your family can all make it easier to make environmentally friendly choices.”
Communities can also use nudge strategies to encourage environmentally friendly behavior. Nudges involve designing choices in a way that leads people to desired behaviors without restricting their freedom. Making recycling bins more accessible or automatically enrolling people in green energy plans reduces the amount of willpower needed to help the planet. “By designing environments and daily routines that minimize friction, we can encourage sustainable behavior without requiring constant mental effort,” Lee said.
The researchers also note that self-control could be used as a useful metric when building teams to tackle climate issues. People who are naturally high in self-control may be better able to cope with the long-term demands of environmental advocacy. “One final thought: when selecting people for roles with significant environmental responsibilities, it makes sense to consider self-discipline alongside environmental attitudes and professional abilities,” Lee said.
This study has several limitations that should be noted. “We used a self-report questionnaire and focused on Chinese high school and university students,” Li said. “This makes our findings suggestive rather than conclusive. Future research should test whether the same pattern holds in other populations using objective measures, such as actual behavioral tasks or real-world tracking, before drawing firmer conclusions.”
Additionally, there was a one-year gap between waves of data collection, so we may have missed small-scale, short-term connections between willpower and sustainable choices. A full year is a long time, and a person’s self-control can fluctuate on a daily or weekly basis.
In the future, the researchers plan to investigate other psychological characteristics that support sustainable living. “Our next step is to understand why some people stick to their environmental intentions while others don’t,” Lee said. “Environmental protection is not a one-time activity, but a multi-decade endeavor, so we are particularly interested in grit, passion and perseverance towards long-term goals.”
“For example, the Paris Agreement sets a carbon neutrality goal for the middle of the 21st century, a timetable that feels far away to most people alive today,” Lee said. “So protecting the planet requires sustained effort with slow and incremental rewards, and it is precisely in these situations that grit comes into play.”
Scientists want to figure out exactly how to foster this kind of long-term commitment. “We want to test whether grit and related traits can help explain who stays the course in the face of such delayed rewards, and whether we can design interventions and educational programs that foster this kind of persistence toward ecological goals,” Lee said.
The study, “Long-term association between self-control and pro-environmental behavior,” was authored by Xingbo Wang, Yanru Liu, Yalun Zhang, Zhenlian Su, Liyun Hua, Yajun Zhao, and Jingguang Li.
