The Impact of Social Distance on Adolescents’ Environmentally Friendly Behavior: The Moderating Role of Online Self-presentation

To investigate the relationship between social distance and adolescents’ environmentally friendly behavior and examine the moderating role of online self-presentation (positive and authentic), a survey of 396 adolescents was conducted using the Self-Inclusion of Others Scale, the Social Network Self-Presentation Questionnaire, and the Environmentally-Friendly Scale. The results showed that: (1) Social distance significantly and positively predicts adolescents’ environmentally friendly behavior, such that shorter social distance was associated with more environmentally friendly behavior; (2) Online authentic self-presentation moderates the relationship between social distance and adolescents’ environmentally friendly behavior. Specifically, social distance positively predicts environmentally friendly behavior among adolescents with low authentic self-presentation, but fails to predict environmentally friendly behavior among adolescents with high authentic self-presentation; (3) Online positive self-presentation moderates environmentally friendly behavior among adolescents with low authentic self-presentation. Specifically, social distance positively predicts environmentally friendly behavior among adolescents with low positive self-presentation, but negatively predicts environmentally friendly behavior among adolescents with high positive self-presentation. These results indicate that online authentic self-presentation weakens the promoting effect of social distance on adolescents’ environmentally friendly behavior, while positive online self-presentation reverses the direction of the effect of social distance, which provides a reference for understanding the mechanism of online self-presentation and promoting adolescents’ environmentally friendly behavior.