Relationships between value orientations, self-determined motivational types and pro-environmental behavioural intentions

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Abstract

We examined the predictive power of egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations and six types of self-determined motivations (i.e. intrinsic motivation, integrated regulation, identified regulation, introjected regulation, external regulation, and amotivation) toward acting pro-environmentally for explaining two types of pro-environmental intentions in two questionnaire studies among student samples (N = 304 and N = 520). The two pro-environmental intentional measures included choosing a car based on environmental performance and donating to an environmental organisation. Values were more predictive of pro-environmental intentions than were self-determined motivational types, although these differences were not always statistically significant. Furthermore, we explored how value orientations are related to self-determined motivational types. The more respondents were altruistically and biospherically oriented, the more they were self-determined to act pro-environmentally. When respondents endorsed egoistic values, they were less self-determined towards acting in a pro-environmental way. When altruistic and especially biospheric values were important predictors of pro-environmental intentions, stronger types of self-determined motivations were also important to explain intentions. And, when egoistic values contributed uniquely to the explanation of pro-environmental intentions, amotivation and external regulation (i.e. less self-determined motivational types) were most relevant for explaining intentions.

Introduction

There is a growing awareness that human behaviour contributes to environmental problems such as water pollution, decline of biodiversity, and desertification (Gardner and Stern, 2002, IPCC, 2007). It is increasingly recognized that pro-environmental actions are essential for decreasing these problems and to promote sustainable development. Following Stern (2000), we define pro-environmental behaviours by its positive impact on “the availability of materials or energy from the environment” and/or by the extent to which the behaviours positively “alter the structure and dynamics of ecosystems or the biosphere” (p. 408). To promote pro-environmental actions, a thorough understanding is needed of which factors affect these behaviours. In this paper, we therefore focus on motivational determinants of pro-environmental behaviours. More specifically, we explore the explanatory power of values and self-determined motivational types.

Many scholars emphasise the importance of human values for explaining pro-environmental behaviours (e.g. Axelrod, 1994, Clark et al., 2003, Stern, 2000). Schwartz (1992) defines a value as: “a desirable transsituational goal varying in importance, which serves as a guiding principle in the life of a person or other social entity (p. 21).” Values may affect a wide range of attitudes and behaviours. Therefore, values can provide an economically efficient instrument for describing and explaining similarities and differences between persons, groups, nations, and cultures (Rokeach, 1973), that is, the number of behaviour-specific beliefs is countless compared to the number of values.

Stern (2000) argues that three types of values (i.e. value orientations) are relevant when explaining pro-environmental behaviours, namely egoistic, altruistic and biospheric values (see also, De Groot and Steg, 2007, De Groot and Steg, 2008, Steg et al., 2005; Stern, Dietz, & Guagnano, 1998). All three value orientations may motivate people to act in a pro-environmental way. For instance, a person may buy an energy-efficient instead of an energy-inefficient car because this is perceived as the cheapest option (egoistic value orientation, i.e. focus on the self), because it emits less polluting gasses that may endanger the health of people (altruistic value orientation, i.e. focus on the welfare of other people), or because it produces less CO2 which protects the environment (biospheric value orientation, i.e. focus on the welfare of the environment and biosphere).

Studies show that while egoistic values are mostly negatively related to pro-environmental attitudes, intentions and behaviours; altruistic and/or biospheric values show a positive relationship (e.g. Gärling et al., 2003, Honkanen and Verplanken, 2004, Milfont and Gouveia, 2006, Nordlund and Garvill, 2002, Stern and Dietz, 1994), probably because many pro-environmental behaviours require individuals to restrain egoistic tendencies (Nordlund and Garvill, 2002, Stern, 2000, Thøgersen and Ölander, 2002). However, biospheric values are generally more strongly related to pro-environmental intentions and behaviours than altruistic values (De Groot & Steg, 2008).

Another research tradition that focuses on motivations in explaining pro-environmental intentions and behaviours is grounded in the Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci and Ryan, 1985, Deci and Ryan, 2000). SDT proposes that people can be motivated to perform behaviours at different levels of self-determination. When people are motivated more autonomously or are said to be “self-determined”, they experience themselves as initiators of their own behaviour, they select their own desired outcomes and choose how to achieve them. By contrast, being controlled or having a low level of self-determined motivation is characterized by lacking a true sense of choice.

Deci and Ryan (1985) propose six types of motivations that are ordered along a self-determination continuum reflecting the extent to which they are autonomously supported by an individual (i.e. self-determined motivational types). On the left of the continuum there is amotivation, which is the least self-determined of all types of motivation, indicating that someone has no intention to perform a certain action at all. Amotivation is accompanied by feelings of incompetence and lack of control, and feeling no sense of purpose, reward, or change of course with respect to those behaviours. To the right of amotivation is a category that represents the least autonomous form of extrinsic motivation, that is, external regulation. People perform such behaviours to satisfy an external demand such as rewards or constraints. Introjected regulation is the next factor on the continuum and describes a type of controlled internal regulation because people are motivated to act out of a sense of obligation related to approval from oneself or from other persons. Such actions are often accompanied by feelings of social pressure. Next, there is identification. Here, the person identifies with the behaviour and the behaviour becomes part of one’s personal identity. The most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation is integrated regulation, which occurs when identified regulations have been fully internalised in the self. Intrinsic motivation is at the far right of the continuum. It represents the most self-determined motivational type and involves those behaviours that are naturally interesting or enjoyable.

Various studies showed that self-determined motivational types towards acting pro-environmentally are related to pro-environmental behaviours, such as recycling, conserving resources, purchasing environmentally-friendly products, and general pro-environmental behaviours (e.g. Green-Demers et al., 1997, Koestner et al., 2001, Séguin et al., 1999, Villacorta et al., 2003). For example, self-determined motivational types were associated with the frequency of behaving pro-environmentally (Pelletier et al., 1997, Pelletier et al., 1998, Villacorta et al., 2003). When respondents were more self-determined towards acting pro-environmentally, they more frequently performed pro-environmental actions, and performed a wider range of those actions. Also, people with stronger self-determined motivational types were more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviours that were perceived to be difficult (Green-Demers et al., 1997). That is, while respondents who were more extrinsically motivated were likely to perform some low-cost pro-environmental behaviours, such as recycling, they were less likely to perform more difficult behaviours (i.e. purchasing environmentally-friendly products) compared to people who showed a stronger self-determined motivation. These results support the assumption of Deci and Ryan (1987) that pro-environmental behaviours are more likely when motivations are more self-determined. However, it is not clear how predictive the six specific motivational types are in explaining pro-environmental behaviours, because most of the studies above only report correlations between the various motivational types and pro-environmental intentions and do not report the amount of explained variance (e.g. Green-Demers et al., 1997, Pelletier et al., 1997, Pelletier et al., 1998, Villacorta et al., 2003).

The studies reviewed above indicate that both values and self-determined motivational types are related to pro-environmental intentions and behaviours. Both can be regarded as general antecedents of pro-environmental behaviour, because they reflect general motives to act pro-environmentally and do not focus on a specific type of pro-environmental behaviour. General antecedents may affect behaviour indirectly, via behaviour-specific beliefs (e.g. Stern, 2000), but also directly (e.g. Séguin et al., 1999, Steg et al., in press). For example, egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations were directly and significantly related to explaining environmental activism (Steg et al., in press). And, Séguin et al. (1999) showed that stronger types of self-determined motivational types were directly related to various types of pro-environmental behaviours. As in the studies above, we also focus on the direct relationships between these general antecedents and pro-environmental behaviours.

Although both values and self-determined motivational types reflect general motives for environmental behaviour, they differ in some important respects. First, egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations explain what people seek through their actions, that is, what they value most when pursuing pro-environmental behaviours (i.e. egoistic, altruistic or biospheric outcomes of the behaviour). In contrast, the six different types of self-determined motivations reveal to what extend someone is autonomously motivated to act in a pro-environmental way (see Pelletier et al., 1998). Therefore, they answer in two different ways the question “Why do people act in a pro-environmental way?”. That is, they focus either on 1) the outcomes of the behaviour (values), or, 2) the extent of freedom of choice when undertaking the behaviour (motivational types).

Second, egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations can affect various behaviours, among which are pro-environmental behaviours. In contrast, self-determined motivational types towards the environment are conceptualised as reasons for engaging in pro-environmental behaviours only. Therefore, the latter are somewhat more specific motivations for environmental actions than are value orientations.

We aimed to compare the predictive power of egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations and the six types of self-determined motivations (i.e. intrinsic motivation, integrated regulation, identified regulation, introjected regulation, external regulation, and amotivation) in explaining pro-environmental intentions. Based on the above, we put forward two competing hypotheses. First, it can be argued that self-determined motivational types are better predictors of pro-environmental behavioural intentions than value orientations. This may be because the different types of self-determined motivations toward the environment are conceptualised on a more behaviour-specific level than are the value orientations, that is, they specifically refer to environmental actions. Behaviour-specific beliefs are assumed to be better predictors of behaviour than are general antecedents such as values (e.g. Ajzen, 1985, Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). Following this line of reasoning, self-determined motivational types should be more strongly related to pro-environmental intentions than values because they are more specific than are values (Hypothesis 1).

Second, people do not act pro-environmentally out of specific environmental motivations only (Stern, 2000). In many cases, behaviour results from multiple motivations (e.g. Frederik et al., 2002, Lindenberg and Steg, 2007). Following this line of reasoning, values should be more powerful in explaining pro-environmental intentions than self-determined motivational types, because they reflect a wider range of motivations (e.g. egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric) than do self-determined motivational types (Hypothesis 2). Self-determined motivational types towards the environment focus on environmental interests only, that is, they reflect why people do something for the environment. We explore which line of reasoning is most plausible by comparing the predictive power of both behavioural determinants in explaining different types of pro-environmental intentions.

Values and self-determined motivational types have frequently been used in empirical studies in the domain of pro-environmental behaviour, but they have typically been used separately. Therefore, a second aim of this study is to explore relationships between values and self-determined motivational types in more detail. As argued, studies show that stronger types of self-determined motivational types and biospheric values are most strongly positively related to a variety of pro-environmental behaviours. Subsequently, the stronger self-determined motivational types are based on internalised values (Ryan & Deci, 2002). Altruistic and, even more so, biospheric value orientations are most positively related to pro-environmental behaviours. Does this suggest that when people are more strongly biospherically (and to a lesser extent altruistically) oriented, they are more self-determined towards acting in a pro-environmental way? And, on the flip-side, when they are more strongly egoistically oriented, are they less autonomously motivated? In this paper, we conducted two studies to test these themes.

Section snippets

Study 1

The first study aimed to examine the predictive power of egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations and the six self-determined motivational types in explaining two types of pro-environmental intentions, that is, 1) the intention to buy a car that performs well on environmental aspects, and, 2) the intention to donate to environmental instead of humanitarian organisations. We also tested how values and self-determined motivational types are interrelated.

Study 2

A drawback of Study 1 was that an order effect could have influenced the results because participants could be primed on “environmental aspects” when first filling in the MTES and value instrument before they indicated their pro-environmental intentions. To exclude this possible explanation, we conducted a second study. We also wanted to examine whether the findings noted in Study 1 could be replicated.

Conclusion and discussion

This paper had two aims. First, we compared the predictive power of six self-determined motivational types and value orientations in explaining pro-environmental intentions. In general, our results showed that value orientations explained more variance in the preference for a car with a high environmental performance and donating intention than the six types of self-determined motivations. More specifically, values explained a significantly higher proportion of the variance in donating

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