How do implicit materialism and postmaterialism affect proenvironmental behavior?

In this study, we explored implicit materialistic and postmaterialistic values, focusing on the relationship between these values and environmental behaviors. Participants were 60 Chinese students, who completed via self-report the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Environmental Behaviors Questionnaire, along with a situation simulation experiment to measure their actual environmental behavior. Our results provide the first evidence for an application of the IAT in research focused on materialism and postmaterialism. We found that implicit postmaterialism significantly predicted proenvironmental behavioral intention in a Chinese context, and implicit materialism was a strong predictor of actual proenvironmental behaviors (i.e., avoidance of paper waste). These results indicate that, for Chinese people, materialism is an important motivation for their actual proenvironmental behaviors.