Exploring Global Environmentalism: Environmental Identity, Belief, and Pro-environmental Behaviors

Dear Colleagues,

Human impacts on the global ecology in many areas ranging from climate change, availability of fresh water, food stability, and ecological migration are widely acknowledged as having reached a critical tipping point (UNFCCC, 2019). It is thus essential that solutions be found in initiatives aimed at changing human behaviors and socio-political action. Despite a heightened level of global cultural awareness of these environmental impacts, the attitudes, behaviors, and values promoting environmental sustainability—particularly among adolescents and young adults—have steadily declined over the past three decades (Wray-Lake, Flanagan, & Osgood, 2010; Krettenauer, Wang, Jia, & Yao, 2019). Di Fabio and Rosen (2018) outline a conceptual framework, the Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development, to address and potentially mitigate these global concerns. The model integrates both sustainability and psychological science in furthering our understanding of specific behaviors that promote sustainable leadership, agency, and pro-environmental behavior. Thus, it is important to integrate these perspectives to better understand behavioral and decisional processes in environmentalism and sustainability.

Environmentalism is narrowly viewed as involving a focus on pro-environmental behaviors. However, a growing number of researchers discuss environmentalism as a multifaceted construct, and argue that it should be studied holistically, and with the aid of multiple methodologies (Jia et al., 2015; Matsuba & Pratt, 2018). For example, Clayton (2019) proposed new avenues with which to study environmentalism, including investigating environmental identity—namely, how our sense of self connects to the natural world. Such an environmental identity perspective may prescribe a course of action that is compatible with individuals’ sense of self. Yet, another line of research studies environmentalism through environmental belief systems or as a particular worldview. Dunlap et al. (2000) argue that implicit within the concept of environmentalism is a challenge to the ecological worldview of humans’ relationship to the natural environment. An individual with an ecocentric belief system places the highest degree of respect and integrity on the needs of the environment, while those with an anthropocentric orientation view the environment as an expendable resource that is consumable for the needs of humans.

In addition, different types of pro-environmental behaviors require differentiation (Jia et al., 2017; Curtin & Jia, 2020). Researchers have argued that environmental actions should be extended from low-level participatory action to highly engaged political or organizational action (Alisat & Riemer, 2015). Less-involved civic actions could consist of something as simple as searching for information on the Internet regarding environmental issues. In contrast, a more highly involved action may be organizing a protest or an event to bring awareness to environmental issues in one’s community.

Despite these important contributions, environmental psychology is hindered by a lack of cultural consideration (Gifford, 2011; Jia & Krettenauer, 2019; Milford et al., 2006). Firstly, past studies have largely investigated individual differences in environmental identity/belief and subsequent effects on pro-environmental action. Study of the differences both between and within cultures (e.g., attitudes, values, and beliefs shared by a group of people) has been largely neglected in the literature. Second, most studies on environmentalism were conducted in Western, Education, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, limiting generalizability. Thirdly, much less work has focused on disadvantaged communities. Previous research has shown that disadvantaged populations were offered fewer opportunities for in-school/out-of-school environmental activities.

This Special Issue will provide the opportunity to gather research on global  environmentalism including environmental identity, belief, and pro-environmental behavior within diverse samples and within novel methodologies from the new framework of the Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development. In this Special Issue, we welcome papers that meet the following points (but not limited to these):

1. Examine individual and cultural factors for prompting pro-environmental behavior.
2. Investigate the relationship between environmental identity/belief and pro-environmental behavior, as well as psychological and cognitive outcomes, including well-being, mental health, and adjustment;
3. Explore viewpoints and experiences of non-WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) cultures and underrepresented populations to better understand cultural influences on environmentalism;
4. Emphasize both internal processes and contextual factors that advocate for policy and practice interventions such as education, persuasion, media, and technology;
5. Highlight the innovations in the measurement of environmentalism, via quantitative approaches, deeper qualitative observations, or other empirical studies that use a mixed-methods approach that employs qualitative methodologies to enrich the meaning of the quantitative data and analyses on various forms of environmentalism.

Dr. Fanli Jia
Dr. Kendall Soucie
Dr. Kyle Matsuba
Guest Editors

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