Are environmental issues moral issues? Moral identity in relation to protecting the natural world

•Moral identity serves as a mechanism for engaging environmental actions.•Environmental action is driven by both self-transcendent moral values and motives.•Environmental activists showed disgust and vigilant moral behaviors towards environmentally irresponsible others.•Environmental non-activists expressed egoistic motivations toward environmental issues.

As environmental issues continually increase in our world, no research has studied how moral identity (defined as moral values and motivation) relates to an individual's tendency towards environmental involvement. We conducted two studies to examine this relationship. In Study I, 164 university students filled out a questionnaire to assess their moral identities and environmental involvement. A person-center approach was used to analyze individual moral identity. It indicated three clusters of moral identity: self-transcendence, mixed, and self-enhancement. It was found that only the self-transcendence (benevolence-care and universalism-concern) cluster positively predicted environmental involvement. In Study II, we used a narrative approach to assess moral motivations in a group of environmental activists and environmental non-activists. The results revealed three motivations of participants whom scored high in environmental involvement: 1) Concern for other species; 2) Vigilance for the environment; 3) Personal disgust towards environmentally irresponsible others. In contrast, we identified two overarching themes of self-interest and apathy among participants who scored low in the environmental involvement. These common themes contain moral values and motivations that echo their environmental commitments.