Abstract
Eco-emotions are increasingly recognized as central psychological processes shaping how individuals perceive environmental crises and engage in collective responses. While negative eco-emotions have been widely studied, positive, self-transcendent emotions may offer more psychologically sustainable pathways to pro-environmental engagement. The present research examines two such emotions—compassion for the environment and awe at nature—and investigates their emotional profiles and social-environmental implications using experimental induction. Across two pre-registered studies, participants were exposed to situations designed to elicit compassion for the environment (Study 1; N = 165) or awe at nature (Study 2; N = 117). Participants then reported their emotional experiences, intentions to engage in pro-environmental collective actions, and provided open-ended definitions of the target emotions. Results showed that compassion and awe were successfully elicited and exhibited distinct emotional patterns. Compassion for the environment was significantly associated with higher intentions to engage in pro-environmental collective actions, whereas awe at nature was not, suggesting that eco-emotions may support different forms of social and environmental engagement. Qualitative analyses revealed conceptual overlap between French participants’ spontaneous descriptions and English-language theoretical definitions. However, contrary to recent empirical categorizations, compassion was generally considered to be a negative emotion. Together, these findings highlight the value of experimentally inducing discrete self-transcendent eco-emotions to clarify their specific emotional content and their distinct roles as socially embedded drivers of environmental engagement.