The Impact of Social Norms on Pro-Environmental Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review of The Role of Culture and Self-Construal

Selma Saracevic,Bodo B Schlegelmilch

doi:10.3390/su13095156

Abstract

This paper documents state-of-the-art research on the impact of social norms on pro-environmental consumer behavior. Our aim was to identify possible research gaps, in particular in terms of the moderating role of culture and self-construal, and to suggest potentially fruitful research avenues. To achieve these objectives, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on the impact of social norms on sustainability over the past 20 years, placing emphasis on the role of culture and self-construal. Altogether, we collected over 16,000 papers via Web of Science and subsequently used NVivo 12 for a fine-grained qualitative analysis. Our findings provide several new insights. First, we identified the most popular research areas, top journals and leading authors in the field of social norms and pro-environmental sustainability. Second, we pinpointed the most popular research topics in the context of the norm–sustainability relationship. Third, we revealed how culture and self-construal have been addressed when researching the connection between social norms and pro-environmental behavior, identified managerial implications, and offered future research directions on the moderating effects of culture and self-construal.

Highlights

One of the main problems in promoting sustainable behavior is the attitude–intentions–behavior gap, as people do not always act in line with their sustainability attitudes (e.g., [1,2,3])
We propose that analyzing the moderating role of self-construal and culture in the relationship between norms and sustainable consumer behavior is important from a theoretical perspective, as it would offer more of a fine-grained understanding of how and why social norms affect sustainable consumer behavior
Our analysis identified only relatively few papers that considered culture and/or self-construal in the norm–sustainability relationship, while the majority of papers had to be excluded from further analysis because they did not deal with individualism and collectivism on a cultural and/or self-construal level in the norm–sustainability relationship

Summary

Introduction

One of the main problems in promoting sustainable behavior is the attitude–intentions–behavior gap, as people do not always act in line with their sustainability attitudes (e.g., [1,2,3]). In an attempt to bridge this gap, scholars in different disciplines (e.g., sociology, psychology, political science, environmental studies, business research and marketing) have searched for ways to activate pro-environmental behavior (e.g., [4,5]). In this context, different researchers (e.g., [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]) have demonstrated that social norms are especially important in motivating sustainable actions. Schultz et al [9] concluded that actions of others motivate pro-environmental behavior more strongly than monetary advantages or environmental benefits

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Conclusion