The COVID-19 pandemic has upended lives and laid bare numerous weak spots of modern society. Healthcare systems have failed, supply chains have broken, and poverty and food insecurity are on the rise (Pereira and Oliveira, 2020; Solomon et al., 2020). As such, many forms of scarcity have been exacerbated by the pandemic, leaving millions of people with insufficient resources to maintain a certain standard of living. The most poignant type of scarcity during this pandemic is the scarcity of physical resources, such as food and medical equipment, as well as financial scarcity due to a weakened economy. However, the pandemic has also resulted in a scarcity of cognitive resources, causing a notable neglect of environmental issues such as climate change and plastic pollution, which are relegated to a lower level of concern. In other words, the pandemic has imposed a form of cognitive scarcity on environmental issues that also deserve attention. This change of priorities is illustrated in the precipitous drop of climate-related media coverage at the onset of the pandemic in some countries (Medium., 2021), which had been increasing steadily in the preceding years (Barouki et al., 2021).

Although this attentional shift might seem intuitive given all the pandemic-induced socio-economic disruptions that have taken place, it may be ultimately counterproductive because environmental degradation could lead to future pandemics. Scientists have for years warned of the connection between disease outbreaks and anthropogenic environmental change such as climate change and habitat destruction (Weiss and McMichael, 2004; Barouki et al., 2021), and how ignoring this connection could set the stage for future pandemics and natural disturbances more generally.

In addition to the health impact, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a sudden perturbation in many aspects of people's lives. According to a recent report from the World Bank, the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push as many as 150 million additional people into extreme poverty, defined as living on less than US$1.90 a day, by 2021 (The World Bank, 2020). It is estimated that during the first three quarters of 2020, nearly 500 million full-time jobs were lost worldwide due to workplace closures (International Labour Organization, 2020). In North America, 46% of Canadians reported being stressed financially (Gadermann et al., 2021), 52% of US adults say they have experienced negative financial impacts due to the pandemic (American Psychological Association, 2020), and 51% of US adults reported that the pandemic has made it harder for them to achieve their financial goals (Pew Research Center, 2021). Local COVID cases and deaths present an immediate health threat and lockdowns and travel restrictions present a threat to social relationships. The financial, health, and social threats may trigger an enormous sense of worry and concern, drawing attentional resources to the threats and creating what has been termed a scarcity mindset.

The scarcity mindset can also have profound implications on pro-environmental behavior. Here we define pro-environmental behavior as any action that can potentially mitigate environmental degradation or increase awareness of environmental issues. As described earlier, perceptions of scarcity result in myopic thinking and foregoing future needs in favor of satisfying present constraints (Shah et al., 2012; Zhao and Tomm, 2018). However, environmental damage often occurs over a broad spatio-temporal horizon, which reduces motivation for sustainable choices via scarcity-induced myopia (van der Wal et al., 2018). Further, environmental sustainability also requires collective actions and cooperation within and between communities. Resource scarcity and the perception of scarcity, on the other hand, have been shown to reduce cooperation, increase ingroup preference and outgroup ostracization (Herzenstein and Posavac, 2019). Recent findings suggest that cooperative social norms which have arisen in times of plenty may dissolve when financial resources are scarce, and competition for those resources fierce (Nhim et al., 2019). However, not all types of scarcity have the same impact on cooperation. For example, in one study, farmers acted more cooperatively to conserve water during times of water scarcity (Nie et al., 2020). In another study, scarcity of social interactions during the current pandemic increased people's willingness to cooperate with public health measures (Civai et al., 2021).

Other empirical work suggests that the scarcity mindset may curb willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior (Sachdeva and Zhao, 2020). In a hypothetical shopping task, participants were given a choice between purchasing sustainably made consumer goods vs. conventionally sourced ones. They were more likely to choose the conventional products when in a scarcity mindset (i.e., not having enough money). Participants in an abundance mindset (i.e., having enough money) preferred the sustainably produced products, even when controlling for price. This work suggests that scarcity deters people from engaging in pro-environmental actions, presumably by devoting attention to the financial problem at hand and diverting attention away from environmental causes. This said, natural resource scarcity (e.g., water scarcity) can promote choices of sustainable products (Sachdeva and Zhao, 2020).

Threat perception, which draws tremendous attentional resources, can explain why people experiencing financial scarcity forgo environmental values and actions during the pandemic. Threats experienced during the pandemic elicit a high level of worry. Since the emotional capacity to worry is thought to be finite (Capstick et al., 2015), being worried about the pandemic can cause less worry about other things, such as the environment and climate change (Sisco et al., 2020; Botzen et al., 2021). To summarize, scarcity caused by the pandemic can be one of the factors that contribute to the environmental degradation during the pandemic.

To some extent, these findings on scarcity curbing pro-environmental behavior are counter-intuitive. Some pro-environmental actions inherently conserve financial resources (e.g., those that reduce waste, promote reuse, and minimize reckless consumerism) and in times of economic crisis, this appears, prima facie, to be reason enough to reduce waste and overconsumption (Vox., 2020). Why then, as previous research suggests, are people under scarcity unwilling to engage in pro-environmental behavior?

One explanation is that the unwillingness may arise from the traditional conceptualization of pro-environmental behavior in the broader psychological literature. Since at least the mid-1970s, pro-environmental behavior has been conceptualized as driven by higher-level needs, and are often value-laden and effortful (Dunlap, 1975; Stern et al., 1999). Consider Table 1, showing an early version of(Maslow, 1954 theory on the hierarchy of needs. In the original formulation of this hierarchy, the satisfaction of more fundamental needs such as physiological needs for food, water, and shelter, can lead to the pursuit of higher-order needs. At the highest level, self-actualization and transcendence needs are thought to drive pro-environmental behavior that yields benefits beyond the self. Note that we are not suggesting a reliance on (Maslow, 1954 specific rank order of needs, nor are we indicating agreement with his seeming belief in these needs mirroring stages of maturity or human development (Maslow, 1967). Rather, we argue that this is not only an inaccurate depiction of why people engage in pro-environmental behavior, but makes pro-environmental behavior seem out-of-reach and inaccessible for many people. Particularly, in times of scarcity, there are other pathways to sustainability that do not depend on higher-order needs. Emphasizing these distinct pathways, satisfying a multitude of human needs, may help reconceptualize pro-environmental behavior more broadly and bolster environmental protection as the world faces increasingly severe natural disturbances (Table 1).

For instance, reducing energy consumption also reduces energy bills and financial stress, in addition to being pro-environment; and reducing vegetation and debris around a house can help protect the house from wildfires and also limit their spread (Olsen et al., 2017). In other words, although most pro-environmental behavior has been value-driven (Corraliza and Berenguer, 2000; Liu and Guo, 2018), there are many pragmatic reasons to be pro-environmental (Sachdeva and Zhao, 2020). Moreover, as experiences and perceptions of scarcity lead to an increased emphasis on the more foundational physiological and safety needs (Yuen et al., 2021), pro-environmental behavior that is better aligned with these lower-level needs may become easier to adopt.

The perspective that we have put forward in this piece stems from an observation in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the midst of all the other pain, suffering, and loss experienced by millions across the world, the looming (and present) impacts of climate change were relegated to a lower rank of priorities (Medium., 2021). To some extent, this demotion of environmental concerns may have seemed justifiable—after all, millions of people are suffering right now. Yet, as researchers raising the alarm about the increase in plastic waste have said, if pro-environmental behavior is demoted during these disturbances, we are only creating more dire future scenarios and trading one crisis for another (Vanapalli et al., 2021). Scientists have been sounding the alarm for years that anthropogenic environmental degradation could lead to more frequent and deadly future pandemics (Weiss and McMichael, 2004; Barouki et al., 2021). For example, the destruction of natural habitats tends to drive wildlife out of their original living space and into contact with humans, thus increasing the risk of animal-to-human disease transmission (Roe et al., 2020; McNeely, 2021; Pelley, 2021). Furthermore, anthropogenic climate change could directly lead to deadlier future pandemics, as many diseases spread faster (Carlson et al., 2021) or expand their range and active season under higher temperatures (Curseu et al., 2010).

The path to mitigating these disturbances may rely on systemic change, which the COVID-19 pandemic can help catalyze (BBC, 2020; Saiz-Álvarez et al., 2020; Stanford Social Innovation Review., 2021). Nascent research already suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted materialism (Briggs et al., 2020; Mehta et al., 2020) and increased people's desire to engage with nature during the lockdown (Robinson et al., 2021; Johnson and Sachdeva, under review¹). The latter in particular has been demonstrated to promote cooperation and act as a gateway to future environmental action (Zelenski et al., 2015). To make nature more accessible to as many people as possible, cities should continue to invest in green infrastructure as many have already done as part of social distancing protocols (Hanzl, 2020; Kleinschroth and Kowarik, 2020). Integration of green spaces into cites can be rethought as a tool to restore and promote mental health (Roe and McCay, 2021), since mental health has been severely impacted by not only the pandemic (Usher et al., 2020) but climate change and environmental crises (Berry et al., 2010; Afifi et al., 2012; Clayton, 2020). Furthermore, evidence suggests that if people are more future-oriented, scarcity can reinforce pro-environmental behavior, such as conserving water (Gu et al., 2020). Early education promoting civic participation and participatory governance may be an important resource in fostering a sustainability and future-oriented culture (Bäckstrand, 2003), which can ultimately transform scarcity into a driver of pro-environmental behavior, as opposed to a stressor.

¹

Other institutional interventions on urban planning can ensure that pro-environmental actions are easier to execute in daily life and do not present an additional cognitive load for people. This includes investing in robust and convenient recycling and composting infrastructure and programs, more convenient public transportation, and subsidies for sustainable products. These measures should make pro-environmental behavior better aligned with scarce conditions so that the decision to behave sustainably is no longer a tradeoff between current needs and future needs. As noted earlier, scarcity, real or subjective, captures our attention often resulting in narrow, present benefits at the expense of future or more abstract gains. As Morton (2017) notes, if a behavior becomes habitual and in the service of current needs, it is more likely to persist even under scarcity. The micro and macro-level interventions suggested by the literature reviewed in this piece require significant investment and are difficult to implement in the best of circumstances. However, the pandemic offers a chance to make these substantial changes so that our societies, mindsets, and the environment itself become more resilient in the face of future disturbances.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

SS and JZ conceived the framework of this paper. SS did the majority of the writing. JW wrote portions of Scarcity Impacts Pro-environmental Behavior, Pro-environmental Behavior Reconceptualized, and Protecting Pro-environmental Behavior sections, and made Table 1. JZ did the majority of editing. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work is funded by a grant from the USDA Forest Service (20-IJ-11242309-037) to SS and JZ.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.