Expanding and Evaluating Motives for Environmentally Responsible Behavior - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 2000 by Raymond De Young

Early work on ERB suggested that the lifestyle we would soon need to adopt to ensure sustainability would be austere, perhaps even somber. Environmental responsibility was often portrayed as the behavioral equivalent of freezing in the dark. We were told to expect neither comfort nor amenity in a sustainable society. It is in this sense that satisfaction gained from luxuries might be considered to be in conflict with other environmentally compatible satisfactions. However, the participants did not view satisfaction derived from luxury as the antithesis of satisfaction gained from the other behavioral patterns. Although logic might suggest a negative correlation between luxury and the other intrinsic satisfaction categories, no such data have emerged. Thus, there is no inherent conflict between ERB and enjoying a modest level of material well-being (De Young & Kaplan, 1985--86). This is a very hopeful finding, for it suggests that there need not be extensive internal dissonance as people begin a transition fr om a material-focused to a conservation-focused lifestyle.

Expanding on the Urge Toward Competence

Researchers have explored in detail whether attitude and subjective norms are necessary and sufficient to cause behavior change (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). The findings suggest that although attitudes and norms sometimes cause behavior change, their influence is significantly reduced when we consider the effects of other variables, including past experience with the behavior (Ajzen, 1991), increased familiarity with the situation, and skill in carrying out the behavior (Gray, 1985). Without considering these variables, we make the error of assuming that once people know what they should do and why they should do it, they will automatically know how to proceed. The issue here is an essential, underlying, and yet sometimes overlooked aspect of behavior change: the need people have for, and the satisfaction people derive from, a sense of competence.

When White (1959) proposed competence or "effectance" as a fundamental human concern, he was arguing for an evolutionarily derived metamotive. Leff, Gordon, and Ferguson (1974) support this claim and show that the research of De Charms (1968, 1971) and J. W. Brehm (1966; S. Brehm & J. W. Brehm, 1981), as well as reinterpretation of White's own earlier research, provides a strong case for believing that the human concern for competence is a primary source of motivation. White also made claims about the intrinsic nature of competence. He argued that the urge toward competence is self-initiating and self-rewarding (White, 1971) and that behaviors associated with competence are highly focused activities that are, in their essence, intrinsically reinforcing (Wandersman, 1979):

When this particular sort of activity is aroused in the nervous system, [competence] motivation is being aroused, for it is characteristic of this particular sort of activity that it is selective, directed, and persistent, and that instrumental acts will be learned for the sole reward of engaging in it. (White, 1959, p. 323)