Motivating
EcoFriendly Behaviors Depends on Cultural Values
From Association
for Psychological Science
The
specific cultural values of a country may determine whether concern about
environmental issues actually leads individuals to engage in environmentally
friendly behaviors, according to the new research published
in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The
findings suggest that individual concern is more strongly associated with
motivation to act in countries that espouse individualistic values, while
social norms may be a stronger motivator in collectivistic societies.
“It is not that people from different cultures have more or less pro-environmental beliefs or engage in more or less pro-environmental actions – the triggers for these actions is what varies across cultures,” says psychological scientist Kimin Eom of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“Our
findings suggest that changing personally-held beliefs, attitudes, and concerns
about social issues, which is one of the most frequent strategies for
behavioral change, may not guarantee corresponding change in all cultures; it
is more likely to be effective in fostering people’s actions to address environmental
issues in more individualistic cultural contexts.”
Eom
and colleagues were prompted to investigate the links between culture,
environmental concern, and environmental action after noticing that both public
discussion and academic research on environmental behavior typically focus on
people from Western countries.
This
is noteworthy because Western countries tend to have cultural values that
prioritize individuals’ own attitudes and beliefs and encourage expression of
them.
“The
assumption seemed to be that once individuals are led to believe in the urgency
of environmental issues and have stronger concerns about sustainability, they
will change and act to address the issues,” explains Eom.
But
this relationship might not hold for individuals living in more collectivistic
societies, which place more emphasis on social harmony and conformity than on
self-expression, the researchers hypothesized.
In
one study, Eom and colleagues looked at data collected from individuals in 48
countries for the World Values Survey.
As
part of the survey, participants rated how serious they thought various
environmental issues – including global warming and pollution – were.
As
a measure of environmental action, individuals also rated their support for two
strategies aimed at addressing environmental pollution: allocating a portion of
their income and paying increased taxes.
The
results showed that the expressing concern about environmental issues wasn’t
necessarily linked with support for environmental action:
“We
found that nations dramatically differed in how much personal concerns about
the environment were associated with intentions to perform environmentally
friendly behavior,” says Eom.
Continue
reading at the Association for Psychological Science.
