With growing insight into the harmful impact of the lifestyles practiced in modern societies on the environment, pro-environment behavioral change has become a central focus of not only environmental policy but also applied environmental psychology. An established theoretical framework is needed to understand the development of environmentally friendly behaviors. The objective of this study was to propose a social-cognitive theory perspective as one of the psychology theories that can be applied to explain pro-environmental behavior. Understanding pro-environmental behavior is crucial as it will contribute to theory development related to the pro-environmental behavior management and to inform the policy maker when devising intervention to encourage pro-environmental behavior. Previous studies have used theory of planned behavior, norm activation theory, and values-beliefsnorms theory to explain pro-environmental behavior. However, the use of social-cognitive theory to explain pro-environmental behavior is lacking. We summarize previous studies which have been using social-cognitive constructs and describe a socialcognitive theory perspective for understanding a variety of routes to promote pro-environmental behavior. The theory highlights personal agency as the capacity of individuals to intentionally choose, execute, and manage their own actions to actualize expected outcomes. When applied in the environmental psychology area, the theory argues that individuals with favorable contextual condition and high environmental self-efficacy judgments will have more outcome expectations and will set more challenging goals, and also will engage more in pro-environmental behavior than individuals with a lower perception of their efficacy to perform such acts.

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Using social cognitive career theory as a framework, we examined the longitudinal effects of proximal parental contextual influences on career aspirations and actions in a collectivist context. We used a sample of 954 Indonesian high school students and measured parental career expectations, adolescent-parent career congruence, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, career aspirations, planning and exploration, twice, 6 months apart. The best-fitting model was reciprocal, with the results showing that parental career expectations predicted subsequent career aspirations and planning, and aspirations and congruence with parents regarding career matters predicted future exploration. Self-efficacy and outcome expectations were reciprocally related over time. Self-efficacy served as an across-time predictor of both parental contextual variables. Career exploration predicted future self-efficacy and planning predicted later outcome expectations.

Although there is a growing interest in the discrepancy between parents and their adolescent children in relation to career expectations, there is no existing, psychometrically sound scale that directly measures adolescent–parent career congruence or incongruence. This study reports the development and initial validation of the Adolescent–Parent Career Congruence Scale. Phase 1 utilized a review of literature, focus groups, and expert feedback to formulate 20 items. In Phase 2, with a sample of 550 students, item and exploratory factor analyses were employed to reduce the number of items to 12, which represented two reliable subscales. In Phase 3, with a second sample of 512 students, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test the initial structure. In Phase 4, the construct validity was examined by correlating the total and subscale scores with measures of parental support, living-up-to parental expectations, and life satisfaction. The implications for use in research and practice are discussed.

Cultural orientation and perceived career congruence with parents are potentially important influences on adolescent career development in collectivist contexts, but few studies have integrated these variables in a social cognitive-based model. We surveyed 337 grade 10 students (53% girls, mean age 15.9 years) from Central Java, Indonesia, and examined a model which consisted of vertical (VC) and horizontal collectivism (HC), perceived congruence with parents, self-efficacy, and career aspirations. After controlling for SES and school achievement, HC was more strongly associated with perceived congruence with parents than VC, and VC and HC were indirectly associated with aspirations via congruence and self-efficacy. These two patterns of collectivism were directly and indirectly associated with self-efficacy via congruence, and perceived congruence was indirectly associated with aspirations via self-efficacy. This study underlined the effects of VC, HC, and perceived adolescent-parent career congruence on career decision-making self-efficacy and aspirations of adolescents from a collectivistic country.