More Than Personality: How Emotional Intelligence Moderates the Association of Personality Traits and Adolescents' Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Personality traits have been associated with adolescents' pro-environmental behaviour, but findings remain inconsistent. This variability suggests that the strength to which personality traits are associated to proenvironmental behaviour may be influenced by other psychological variables. This study explored whether emotional intelligence played a moderator role in the relationship between personality traits and proenvironmental behaviour in a sample of 1855 Portuguese adolescents (Mage = 14.52 years, SDage = 1.76 years, 49,2% female). Results showed that all personality traits, except neuroticism, were significantly positively associated with pro-environmental behaviour. Furthermore, emotional intelligence, defined as an individual's ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions both in themselves and others, moderated the relationship between extraversion and agreeableness and pro-environmental behaviour, such that higher emotional intelligence strengthened the positive association between these traits and adolescents' pro-environmental behaviour. These findings underscore the role of personality in shaping adolescents' pro-environmental tendencies and suggest that emotional intelligence may act as a useful psychological resource to enhance pro-environmental behaviour, particularly among more extraverted and agreeable youth.