Commitment and Pro-Environmental Behaviors: Favoring Positive Human-Environment Interactions to Improve Quality of Life

Abstract

Environmental psychology focuses on peopleenvironment relations. These relations are often considered in adaptative terms: how can one avoid degradations, limit the overexploitation of natural resources, or cope with some urban annoyances (noise, pollution, etc.)? From a different perspective, Weiss and Girandola (2009, 2010a, b) suggested developing a positive psychology of sustainable development, dealing with social and dispositional factors that enable satisfaction, quality of life and, even more, individual well-being. Thus, the environment should no longer be considered a constraint requiring efforts to adapt to it but more a potential source of positive emotions, as shown in works on restorative environments or place attachment (e.g., Lewicka 2011; Staats 2012). Because of the perceptions, attitudes and representations it arouses, the environment is a major source of influence on individuals' well-being and quality of life. But under what conditions? According to Uzzell and Moser (2006) " : : : a sustainable quality of life is only achieved when people interact with the envi

Employees’ pro-environmental behavior in an organization: a case study in the UAE

“…More precisely, it reviewed commitment-making strategies and the effects of binding communication on the adoption of PEBs such as waste sorting, recycling, non-activist behaviors in the public sphere and energy saving. The study found that commitment, disagreement and binding communication can strengthen the positive characteristics of interactions between humans and the environment and, thereby, improve quality of life 72 . Building on that, it was found that higher levels of commitment to the environment and greater inclusion of nature in the self separately predicted higher levels of PEB.…”

A Note on Moral Licensing and Foot-in-The-Door Effect

“…A significant literature 1 has sought to explain these apparently inconsistent predictions, employing a dynamic moral self-regard model of self-regulation (Monin and Jordan 2009;Zhong, Liljenquist, and Cain 2009). In line with Demarque and Girandola (2016) we propose a framework in which a consumer may obtain a positive amount of moral self-worth through an initial preparatory choice (e.g., walking rather than driving to work); and when making a subsequent concluding decision, the consumer may manifest behavioural consistency (e.g., by going to a conference by a train rather than by plane), as well as inconsistency (e.g., by going to a conference by a plane rather than by train). Research suggests that the decision to license (vs consistency) occurs whenever the individual perceives the initial act as affecting her moral identity (Blanken, van de Ven, and Zeelenberg 2015;Effron and Conway 2015;Mullen and Monin 2016).…”

Sustainable Marketing

“…Intrinsic factors like QOL (quality of life) and well-being also have been a point of interest, especially in the recent years. There are conceptual and review papers that discussed the antecedents such as QOL, well-being, intrinsic motivation, trust, values, and communication that lead to environmental, green, and sustainable behavior (Carratini et al 2015;Demarque and Girandola 2017;Félonneau and Cause 2017;Kaiser et al 2017;Peattie 2010;Quoquab and Mohammad 2017;Tapia-Fonllem et al 2017;Venhoeven et al 2017).…”