This article aimed to demonstrate that hedonic values are important for understanding environmentally relevant beliefs, preferences, and actions, next to egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values. In four studies, the authors found consistent support for their hypothesis that hedonic, egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values can be distinguished empirically, suggesting that the distinction between the four types of values is not only theoretically meaningful but also recognized by individuals. Importantly, in line with the authors' expectations, hedonic values appeared to be significantly and negatively related to a range of environmentally relevant attitudes, preferences, and behaviors, even when the other values were controlled for. This suggests that it is indeed important to include hedonic values in environmental studies and that interventions aimed to promote proenvironmental actions should consider hedonic consequences of actions, as these may be important barriers for behavior change.

The relationship between biospheric values, environmental self-identity and environmental preferences, intentions and behaviour.

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Global climate change threatens the health, economic prospects, and basic food and water sources of people. A wide range of changes in household energy behavior is needed to realize a sustainable energy transition. We propose a general framework to understand and encourage sustainable energy behaviors, comprising four key issues. First, we need to identify which behaviors need to be changed. A sustainable energy transition involves changes in a wide range of energy behaviors, including the adoption of sustainable energy sources and energy-efficient technology, investments in energy efficiency measures in buildings, and changes in direct and indirect energy use behavior. Second, we need to understand which factors underlie these different types of sustainable energy behaviors. We discuss three main factors that influence sustainable energy behaviors: knowledge, motivations, and contextual factors. Third, we need to test the effects of interventions aimed to promote sustainable energy behaviors. Interventions can be aimed at changing the actual costs and benefits of behavior, or at changing people’s perceptions and evaluations of different costs and benefits of behavioral options. Fourth, it is important to understand which factors affect the acceptability of energy policies and energy systems changes. We discuss important findings from psychological studies on these four topics, and propose a research agenda to further explore these topics. We emphasize the need of an integrated approach in studying the human dimensions of a sustainable energy transition that increases our understanding of which general factors affect a wide range of energy behaviors as well as the acceptability of different energy policies and energy system changes.

A strong environmental self-identity increases the likelihood of a wide range of proenvironmental actions. But which factors influence identity and can we strengthen it? We propose that the environmental self-identity depends on biospheric values and on past behavior and that the strength of one's environmental self-identity can be changed somewhat by reminding people of their past environmental behavior. We tested our model in a series of studies and show that biospheric values and past environmental behavior influence the environmental self-identity, which is in turn related to subsequent environmental judgments and intentions. Furthermore, we found that although the strength of the environmental self-identity changed when we reminded people of their past environmental actions, biospheric values remained an important predictor of self-identity, suggesting that the environmental self-identity has a stable core. Our results further suggest that environmental-friendly behavior can be promoted by reminding people of their past proenvironmental actions as this will strengthen one's environmental self-identity.Article Van der Werff et al.