Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior

Abstract AbstractAchieving a sustainable future will require changes in behavior, and recent analyses have shown the importance of a behavioral perspective in addressing environmental issues. This chapter reviews the large and rapidly growing body of psychological research aimed at understanding and promoting pro-environmental behavior. The behavior change research is organized into approaches that focus on the person and those that focus on the context. Person-level approaches include information campaigns, along with approaches that target egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric motivational bases of behavior. Context-level approaches have generally focused on convenience and structural barriers, but new research is examining the role of contextual variables in activating or enhancing personal motivations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of practical considerations, including behavior selection, rebound effects, and spillover.