Pro-Environmental Conservation Behavior Through the Lens of Norm Activation Model: A Systematic Review (2018–2023)

Abstract

Environmental psychology has exhibited a notable propensity for promoting pro-environmental conduct as a feasible strategy for confronting environmental issues and fostering sustainable development. Recent research has incorporated the norm activation model (NAM) into several investigations concerning individual and organizational pro-environmental conservation behaviors. The objectives of this literature review were to: 1) examine pro-environmental behaviors previously studied using the NAM framework; and 2) analyze the extended NAM components. 3), understanding NAM construct framing; 4), finding environmental studies' NAM model theories; and 5), assessing variables' importance and linkage, including mediating variables. This review employed a systematic literature review encompassing 53 articles published from 2018 to 2023. The results indicated that 98.11 percent of studies employed NAM by integrating additional constructs to improve its ability to predict environmentally friendly behavior. About 39.62% of research included constructs from other theories to improve the main theory's predictive power. TPB was heavily integrated into the NAM model. The results of the review also indicate that NAM is a strong paradigm for explaining pro-environmental behavior when combined with relevant constructs. Its application differs between core factors like personal norms, awareness of consequences, and ascription of responsibility and literature-introduced notions like motivation, risk, benefits, beliefs, knowledge, personality, and cultural values. These additional factors may greatly affect human pro-environmental behavior, drawing attention to using NAM in environmental behavior studies in new ways.