Different Values Motivate Different Pro-Environmental Behaviors

College campuses are placing a greater focus on sustainability, which can contribute to future leaders' environmental literacy. The Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory states that social and psychological factors, specifically values, beliefs, and norms, influence behaviors. VBN Theory has a particularly useful application among college students because, unlike most adults, many college students are still in the process of forming their values and beliefs. Research on the environmental values and beliefs of college students is important because practitioners need to know the motivating factors that influence pro-environmental behavior in order to promote sustainability. The authors of this study wanted to find out if values, beliefs, and norms have a greater influence on pro-environmental behavior than knowledge of environmental issues, so they decided to test it on college students.

The authors of this study examined the values, beliefs, and norms that they believed may influence pro-environmental behaviors among a group of students at the University of Michigan. The researchers chose the University of Michigan because it is 1) a large university (the student population is over 50,000) with a diverse array of students from different regions, and 2) one the U.S.'s most sustainable universities. The University of Michigan has a well-known campus-wide sustainability campaign and students are exposed to a number of sustainability initiatives. Studies in the past have argued that greater knowledge leads to more pro-environmental behavior. Students at the University of Michigan are exposed to a great deal of information about the environment and sustainability, making it a good place to test whether values have a greater impact on pro-environmental behavior than knowledge.

The researchers randomly selected 25,000 students at the University of Michigan to receive an email with an invitation to participate in a survey on environmental behaviors and 2,828 students completed the survey. Data was collected via an online survey that assessed five environmental behaviors: 1) recycling; 2) sustainable food choices; 3) transportation choices; 4) electricity use; and 5) support for pro-environment political candidates. For each of the five variables, the survey contained a number of questions assessing the frequency with which participants exhibited the behaviors (such as recycling paper). To assess values, participants answered questions regarding the importance of specific environmental principles as guiding principles in their lives. They measured beliefs and norms by having participants state how much they agreed or disagreed with statements about the environment and sustainability. The researchers used the responses to test associations between values and the five pro-environmental behaviors.

Results confirmed the VBN theory that values influence environmental behaviors and that different values lead to different behaviors. The researchers found evidence that values had a greater influence than knowledge level on what behaviors students acted on. The five values this study focused on were humanistic altruism (valuing humanity), biospheric altruism (valuing the natural environment, as opposed to the human-made environment), egoism (self-interest), traditionalism (conservativism), and openness to change. Participants who held biospheric and humanistic values were more likely to exhibit pro-environmental behaviors, though biospheric values were more consistently correlated with all five of the pro-environmental behaviors. Participants who held humanistic values were likely to make sustainable transportation choices and to save electricity. Participants with traditional values were unlikely to make pro-environmental food choices and support pro-environment political candidates, but they were likely to conserve electricity and participants with egoistic values were unlikely to exhibit pro-environmental behaviors. Participants open to change were likely to support pro-environmental candidates and support pro-environmental behaviors, but less likely to engage in pro-environment behaviors, like sustainable transportation choices.

This study is limited by the fact that all results were self-reported. The researchers did not conduct any observations of the participants, so there was no way to confirm students' answers with data on day-to-day behaviors. Additionally, the researchers only examined five behavioral variables. There are certainly many more pro-environmental behaviors, and a survey examining different behaviors may have produced different results.

The authors recommend that practitioners working on university sustainably initiatives refrain from using a one-size-fits-all approach to sustainability education. Rather, environmental educators should work to figure out their audiences' values. For example, if a university is trying to change the environmental behaviors in a particular dorm, a survey should be conducted to figure out the value and belief systems of the residents. Then, the university can formulate a message or messages that appeal to the residents' value systems. For example, university sustainability educators could reach students who have more egoistic values by appealing to the personal costs of acting in a non-sustainable manner.

The authors highlighted that biospheric values were consistently correlated with all five pro-environmental behavior variables. While sustainability educators should appeal to a variety of value systems, they should also focus efforts on increasing biospheric values. Sustainability initiatives should aim to cultivate a love for nature and encourage students to look past their human-made environments to see the value in the natural world. The authors note that values shape norms, so rather than trying to create new norms, practitioners should focus on inspiring new values among students.