Individual Pro-environmental Behavior Research Articles

Increasing collaborative, pro-environmental activism: The roles of Motivational Interviewing, self-determined motivation, and self-efficacy

We investigated factors that promote successfully pursuing collaborative activist pro-environmental goals. Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to undergo a single session of Motivational Interviewing or a directive, control intervention; immediately afterwards, they set two collaborative, activist pro-environmental goals and rated how self-determined and self-efficacious they felt about those goals. Approximately 7 weeks later, they reported their progress on the goals and re-rated how self-determined and self-efficacious they had felt about the goals while they were pursuing them. Self-determined motivation both prospectively and concurrently predicted goal progress. Motivational Interviewing helped the goal progress of those participants who, at pre-screening, reported engaging in many individual pro-environmental behaviors, but the more directive approach worked better for those participants who were less ready to change. These results suggest the importance of attending to motivational variables if one hopes to increase people's engagement in collaborative, activist pro-environmental behaviors.

Comparing the relative mitigation potential of individual pro-environmental behaviors

Abstract Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are modifying climate patterns on a global scale. Behavior changes at the household level can help limit the magnitude of carbon emissions and associated climate change. The objective of this study is to determine which individual actions have the largest potential for reducing household greenhouse gas emissions. Past behavior change research has focused on the reduction potential of direct emissions in one or two household domains at a time, often overlooking the indirect emissions associated with food consumption. Here, the potential greenhouse gas emissions reductions are compared for seven individual pro-environmental behaviors in the transportation, housing, and food domains. For the average household in North America and Europe, eating fewer animal products has the largest greenhouse gas emissions reduction potential of the behaviors studied, followed by switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Additional analyses reveal that air transportation might have larger emission reduction potential than dietary changes, especially for higher-income households that fly frequently. Targeting these high-impact behaviors will be more cost-beneficial for climate change policies and programs. This study can help guide these intervention efforts.

Can’t Hurt, Might Help: Examining the Spillover Effects From Purposefully Adopting a New Pro-Environmental Behavior

This field experiment investigated whether purposefully adopting a new pro-environmental behavior (e.g., unplugging appliances, reusing shopping bags) led to positive spillover by altering people’s subsequent pro-environmental behaviors and political attitudes. Participants ( N = 125) recruited through community organizations were randomly assigned to either adopt a new pro-environmental behavior of their choice for three weeks, or were not invited to do so. Behavior adoption increased participants’ likelihood of contacting their senator about climate change, but had little direct spillover effect on other individual pro-environmental behaviors, their likelihood of making household-wide changes, the political importance they placed on climate-related issues, or their support for emissions-reducing policies. Behavior adoption increased sense of environmental responsibility among some participants, leading to indirect positive effects on purchasing organic/local produce and policy support. Overall, observed positive spillover effects were limited and relatively small. There was little indication that behavior adoption led to any meaningful negative spillover effects.

Crunch the can or throw the bottle? Effect of “bottle deposit laws” and municipal recycling programs

Although there is growing public awareness about environmental issues, incentive mechanisms leading to individual pro-environmental behaviors remain less investigated. This article examines the impact of bottle deposit laws (BDL), municipal recycling programs (MRP), and the ease of municipal recycling on recycling frequency for numerous products. An online survey of U.S. and Canadian households was conducted to collect data about individuals’ recycling practices and perceptions. We contracted an online survey company, Global Market Insite (GMI), to recruit panelists within their database to take the survey. GMI invited 2700 consumer panelists within their database representing all contiguous U.S. states and all Canadian provinces with 2511 surveys completed. Utilizing specific treatment groups and propensity score matching to control for unobserved heterogeneity, we find that MRP has a greater impact on recycling behaviors than BDL, and that the perceived ease of MRP positively influences individual recycling behaviors. For BDL without a municipal program being present, their effect is only for those products requiring the deposit. This research is useful for agencies interested in encouraging recycling behavior and researchers interested in the determinants of recycling behavior. Both programs should be measured for effectiveness and municipal recycling programs should be implemented where the goal is to promote recycling behavior as it was shown here to have a greater impact on recycling programs and may be perceived as an easier thing to do.

Reputation and household recycling practices: Field experiments in Costa Rica

Pro-environmental behavior is the willingness to cooperate and contribute to environmental public goods. A good understanding of why individuals undertake pro-environmental actions is important in order to construct policies that are aligned with preferences and actual behavioral patterns, such as concern for social esteem and reputation. In this paper, we present the results of a framed field experiment that explores reputation formation as a driver in support of household recycling practices. We use a “shame” and a “pride” treatment to test which is more effective, if at all, in increasing recycling effort. We find that reputational concerns indeed play a role in shaping individual pro-environmental behavior. Surprisingly, subjects cooperate more if the situation is framed as avoiding shame (bad reputation) rather than as acquiring pride and gratitude (good reputation). The actual experiment is based on a real recycling program, with participants who are heads of urban households in Costa Rica.

Ecological citizenship: a driver of pro-environmental behaviour?

In theory, ecological citizenship (EC) has been suggested as a driver of individual pro-environmental behaviour (PEB), providing a more stable foundation for lifestyle changes than reliance on external policy tools. The relevance of EC for explaining PEB is tested by applying data from a Swedish survey designed to capture various aspects of EC. A significant proportion of Swedes fulfil the values-based requirements of ecological citizenship, as outlined in EC-theory. Furthermore, individuals who think along the lines of EC are more likely than others to behave in an environmentally friendly manner in their day-to-day activities. Certain aspects of EC are more important for PEB than others, which implies the need for further theoretical development of EC theory.

Place Attachment: Capturing Causes of Individual Pro-Environmental Behaviors in the Workplace

Scholars from an array of disciplines have sought to explain why individuals engage in pro-environmental behaviors in various settings. In the field of environmental psychology, place attachment has been identified as a significant predictor of an individual's decision to act in pro-environmental ways. The construct of place attachment has not yet been employed in management research. Although organizational commitment and social identity, regularly used to predict behavior in the workplace, measure some similar dimensions as those found in place attachment, place attachment uniquely captures an individual's relationship with the natural environment. Recognizing possible overlaps among these literatures, as well as some remaining gaps between them, we make a preliminary investigation of how they might jointly contribute to an understanding of workplace pro-environmental behaviors, affording particular attention to how place attachment might extend management scholarship.

Explaining pro-environmental behaviors with environmentally relevant variables: A survey in Korea

The increasing concerns of Korean consumers towards environmental issues appear to have generated little discernable impact on individual pro-environmental behaviors. Therefore, it is important to look into the comprehensive process in which pro-environmental behavior is generated. The aim of this study is to seek predictors of pro-environmental behavior of Korean consumers and to test interrelationships among environmentally relevant variables: environmental concern, environmental knowledge, perceived consumer effectiveness, and environmental affect, and their effect on preference for products with pro-environmental attributes. We wish to provide an account of the way Korean pro-environmental behavior is shaped, with a specific focus on three types of behavior: green purchase behavior, green product use behavior, and green product disposal behavior. Key words: Green consumer, pro-environmental behavior, environmental knowledge, environmental concern, environmental affect.

One More Awareness Gap? The Behaviour–Impact Gap Problem

Preceding research has made hardly any attempt to measure the ecological impacts of pro-environmental behaviour in an objective way. Those impacts were rather supposed or calculated. The research described herein scrutinized the ecological impact reductions achieved through pro-environmental behaviour and raised the question how much of a reduction in carbon footprint can be achieved through voluntary action without actually affecting the socio-economic determinants of life. A survey was carried out in order to measure the difference between the ecological footprint of “green” and “brown” consumers. No significant difference was found between the ecological footprints of the two groups—suggesting that individual pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour do not always reduce the environmental impacts of consumption. This finding resulted in the formulation of a new proposition called the BIG (behaviour–impact gap) problem, which is an interesting addition to research in the field of environmental awareness gaps.

El rol de los eventos antecedentes y consecuentes en la conducta sustentable

A review of the pertinent literature shows that the interest of most environmental psychologists focuses on studying the antecedent events (i.e., historical-and-situational dispositional variables) that promote sustainable behavior. This behavior is defined as the set of actions aimed at conserving the Earth’s natural and socio-cultural resources, so that the wellbeing of present and future generations can be guaranteed. Although several psychological frameworks –eminently the behaviorist- acknowledge the importance of the positive consequent variables (i.e., positive repercussions) on the display and maintenance of sustainable behavior, a limited interest in their study is detected, especially in regard to the role played by intrinsic consequences. Since a number of those consequences have been recently reported in research reports, this paper discusses how the positive repercussions might promote the display of sustainable lifestyles and how the antecedent events could be connected with the consequent ones, so that a higher likelihood of generating pro-environmental and pro-social behaviors among citizens may be achieved. The paper also reviews a possible way of connecting individual proenvironmental behavior with the cultural practice of sustainable actions

Explaining pro-environmental behavior with a cognitive theory of stress

Based on cognitive stress theory we present a model that aims at explaining individual pro-environmental behavior: environmental stressors (e.g. pollution in domestic and work contexts), mediated via appraisal processes (demand appraisal, self-efficacy), activate problem-focused coping. This in turn leads to pro-environmental behavior in various behavioral domains (social engagement, private-sphere and workplace). Structural equation models were used to test the proposed model. Questionnaire data from Studies 1 and 2 suggest that the theory offers a good explanation of pro-environmental behavior. However, self-efficacy beliefs did not predict problem-focused coping or pro-environmental behavior. In a modified model, we hypothesized that with environmental problems as stressors, it would be collective (rather than individual) efficacy that determines coping attempts and pro-environmental behavior. Studies 3 and 4 found support for this modified model. Taken together the four studies lent support to our basic idea that appraisal processes activate problem-focused coping, which in turn leads to pro-environmental behavior.

Ecological Risks and Community Perceptions of Fairness and Justice: A Cross-Cultural Model

ABSTRACT Intergenerational justice is implicit in international commitments to sustainability. If ecological, economic, and social components of sustainability are to be achieved there is a necessity for intergenerational justice considerations to be included in decision-making. The present generation's risk judgments should include consideration of the possible outcomes for their children. But intergenerational issues cannot be considered in isolation from other current risk and fairness concerns. This article reports a community-based integrative model that describes justice and other attitudes and motivations that determine community and individual pro-environmental behavior in two nations: Germany and Australia. This model can account for a considerable amount of the variance in political compliance as well as various pro-environmental behaviors. Group or individual self-interests have nearly no effects on global protective behavior. It is shown that universal as well as contextual principles including distributive (within or between generations), procedural and interactive justice, play a crucial role in fairness judgments. Other principles are also taken into account, such as efficiency, environmental rights, and rights to economic welfare. The results are discussed in relation to the importance of complex community fairness judgments in predicting and evaluating acceptance of political decisions, and for promoting proenvironmental behavior.

Ecological risks and community perceptions of fairness and justice: a cross-cultural model.

Intergenerational justice is implicit in international commitments to sustainability. If ecological, economic, and social components of sustainability are to be achieved, there is a necessity for intergenerational justice considerations to be included in decision making. The present generation's risk judgments should include consideration of the possible outcomes for their children. But intergenerational issues cannot be considered in isolation from other current risk and fairness concerns. This article reports on a community-based integrative model that describes justice and other attitudes and motivations that determine community and individual proenvironmental behavior in two nations: Germany and Australia. This model can account for a considerable amount of the variance in political compliance as well as various proenvironmental behaviors. Group or individual self-interests have nearly no effects on global protective behavior. It is shown that universal as well as contextual principles, including distributive (within or between generations), procedural, and interactive justice, play a crucial role in fairness judgments. Other principles are also taken into account, such as efficiency, environmental rights, and rights to economic welfare. The results are discussed in relation to the importance of complex community fairness judgments in predicting and evaluating acceptance of political decisions, and for promoting proenvironmental behavior.