In order to foster pro-environmental behavior in the midst of a global ecological crisis, current research in environmental psychology is often limited to individual-related factors and theories about conscious processing. However, in recent years, we observe a certain discontentment with the limitations of this approach within the community as well as increasing efforts toward broadening the scope. In our work, we aim for a closer investigation of the relations between individuals, societal factors, and pro-environmental actions while (...) considering the role of the unconscious. We hereby draw on the work of critical social psychology. From a life course perspective, we emphasize the important role of socialization, institutional and cultural contexts for mindsets and related perceptions, decisions and actions. This link between the individual and the society enables us to understand biographical trajectories and related ideologies dominant within a society. We seek to show that the approach of CSP is helpful for understanding why efforts of establishing pro-environmental actions on a large scale are still failing. In this article, we discuss the theoretical links between environmental psychology and CSP as well as possible implications, paving the way for a comprehensive future research agenda. (shrink)

Conflicts over rangeland exploitation have been a serious challenge in Iran, rooted in human behavior. Accordingly, this study aimed to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework in the field of analyzing conflict behavior among rangeland exploiters. This research is a descriptive-correlational and causal-relational study conducted using a cross-sectional survey. The statistical population of the study was rangeland exploiters in one of the northwest provinces of Iran (N= 66,867) of whom 384 people were selected as a sample and stratified random sampling method (...) with proportional assignment. The research instrument was a questionnaire, the validity of which was confirmed by a panel of academic experts and the reliability of its items was verified using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The results showed that the variables of personal norms (PN) and the perceived behavioral control were able to predict 25.9% of the variance in terms of the conflicting behavior of rangeland exploiters; besides, ascription of responsibility, PN, perceived behavioral control, and awareness of consequences, which have been proposed as activators of PN, were able to explain a significant percentage (63.5%) of the variance in terms of PN. Furthermore, analysis of the effects of environmental and cultural values showed that conflict behaviors of exploiters were mostly affected by their underlying values. Generally, the results of this study would help in the development of more integrated and comprehensive models in the field of exploiters’ conflict behavior. Eventually, to change and improve the environmental behavior of exploiters to better management of conflict in rangelands, providing a list of considerations and competencies for agricultural extension and education, this article comes to the end. (shrink)

Considering the vulnerable climatic conditions in most parts of the planet, a successful transition toward a carbon-free future is a critical challenge worldwide. In this respect, around 35% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emission is associated with the power sector. To this end, a vast of electrical energy has been used by the people in buildings. Specifically, a significant amount of energy in buildings is used for heating, cooling, and ventilation. While the available literature highlights the importance of neat, (...) clean, and green electrical energy for the decarbonization of society, a critical gap exists in such literature. That is, most of the literature under this stream deals with the supply side of electrical energy, while the demand side was neglected. To bridge this critical knowledge gap, this study investigates how the CSR engagement of a hotel organization can promote the energy-related pro-environmental behavior among the employees with the intervening effect of employees’ environmental commitment and Green intrinsic motivation. Further, the conditional indirect role of altruistic values was also tested in this study. The data were collected from different hotel employees in Pakistan with the help of a self-administered questionnaire. We tested the hypothesized relationship through structural equation modeling. The results confirmed that CSR can be a potential motivator to impact the ERPEB of employees, while EMEC and GRIM mediated this relationship significantly. The findings of this study also confirmed the conditional indirect role of altruistic values. These findings offer various theoretical and practical contributions which are conversed in detail. (shrink)

Vast and pervasive environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss call every individual to active stewardship. Their magnitude and causal and strategic structures, however, pose powerful challenges to our moral psychology. Stewardship may feel overburdening, and appear hopeless. This may lead to widespread moral and political disengagement. This article proposes a resolve to garden practices as a way out of that danger, and describes the ways in which it will motivate individuals to so act as to (...) coordinate on behavioural patterns that will significantly alleviate grave, but seemingly distant and intractable environmental quandaries. (shrink)

Psychological well-being is an important indicator of well-being and has been found to be associated with a multitude of positive life outcomes. Using data collected from 1,871 Chinese college students from September 23 to October 5, 2020, this study examined students' psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic and investigated how resilience and pandemic-related environmental stress may affect psychological well-being. Results showed that resilience had strong positive effects on psychological well-being during the pandemic. Meanwhile, environmental stress had a moderate (...) effect and marginally reduced psychological well-being. The magnitudes of the estimates suggested that increasing resilience can effectively buffer the negative effect of environmental stress on psychological well-being. (shrink)

Identifying the determinants of human behavior is useful to adjust interventions and lead the civil society toward a stronger commitment to climate change mitigation and adaptation objectives, achieving greater support for successfully implementing environmental policies. Existing research has largely focused on case studies of pro-environmental behaviors in developed economies but there is very little evidence for developing countries. This study provides estimations of the effect of internal factors, such as sociodemographic variables, and four psychological dimensions on PEBs. Data (...) were obtained through a survey applied with future decision makers – university students – from Colombia and Nicaragua. Indices were generated for PEBs and the psychological dimensions using z-scores and Principal Component Analysis. Partial correlations were evaluated through the Ordinary Least Squares method. Our results suggest that, in order to reach the planned emission reduction targets, policy approaches should more strongly focus on educating and motivating citizens and prepare them for contributing to the environmental cause, as well as provide individual solutions to combat CC, rather than providing only information on its causes and consequences. (shrink)

Psychology, often defined as the science of human behavior, has so far had little to say about the environmental destruction which is currently occurring as the result of human behavior. I consider the reasons why it has not and suggest that the ideological preconceptions that underpin the discipline are similar to those of the technological-economic system that is largely responsible for degradation ofthe environment. Psychology, by normalizing the behavioral, life-style, and personality configurations associated with environmental destruction, (...) and lacking a historical perspective on changes in consciousness and technology, is unable to contribute effectively to the ecological debate. I conclude that the discipline needs to locate itself historically and ideologically before it can offer an adequate analysis of environmental destruction. (shrink)

Psychology, often defined as the science of human behavior, has so far had little to say about the environmental destruction which is currently occurring as the result of human behavior. I consider the reasons why it has not and suggest that the ideological preconceptions that underpin the discipline are similar to those of the technological-economic system that is largely responsible for degradation ofthe environment. Psychology, by normalizing the behavioral, life-style, and personality configurations associated with environmental destruction, (...) and lacking a historical perspective on changes in consciousness and technology, is unable to contribute effectively to the ecological debate. I conclude that the discipline needs to locate itself historically and ideologically before it can offer an adequate analysis of environmental destruction. (shrink)

Global warming and other climate issues seriously threaten global sustainable development. As citizen environmental behavior can have a positive impact on the environment, it is of great theoretical significance and practical reference value to study the impact of psychological distance theory on citizen environmental behavior. This study obtained 2,633 related studies from 1980 to 2020 from the Web of Science as research objects, and used CiteSpace, VOSviewer, Netdraw, and other software programs to perform a bibliometric analysis, which can (...) show the complex relationship implied in the citation, intuitively grasp the development context and hot frontier in this field, and help scholars better study citizen environmental behavior. The results and conclusions are as follows. The related research covered three periods: infancy, growth, and outbreak. Chronologically, the relevant research evolved from building models to analyze the impact of environmental enrichment on human environmental behavior, to studying the motivation behind citizen environmental behavior, and finally to paying attention to sustainable development. A cluster analysis of high-frequency keywords identified three research hotspots: “drivers of psychological distance of environmental change perception on citizen environmental behavior,” “impact of social distance on adolescents’ behavior,” and “construal level theory and citizen green behavior.” Based on these findings, possible future research directions were identified, including changing from a single theory to a combination of multiple theories to comprehensively study citizen environmental protection behavior; analyzing the motivation of citizen environmental behavior and summarizing the general motivation of environmental behavior according to its internal relationship; and determining how to narrow the global psychological distance, strengthen the awareness of the community of human destiny, and explore the establishment of an efficient global climate cooperation mechanism. (shrink)

The world is looking toward organizations for social responsibility to contribute to a sustainable environment. Employees’ organizational citizenship behavior for the environment is a voluntary environmental-oriented behavior that is important for organizations’ environmental performance. Based on social learning theory, this study examined the effects of responsible leadership in connection with OCBE by using a sample of 520 employees in the manufacturing and service sectors in China including engine manufacturing, petroleum plants, banking, and insurance sector organizations. Further, the roles (...) of psychological ownership and employee environmental commitment were used as mediators and moderators simultaneously. The direct, mediation, and moderation model results exposed a positive relationship between responsible leadership and OCBE via employee psychological ownership and employee environmental commitment. The study also revealed that the indirect effect is stronger when employees hold a higher employee environmental commitment. The theoretical and practical implications for environmental sustainability in respect of organizations as well as future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Though largely a theoretical endeavour, environmental ethics also has a practical agenda to help humans achieve environmental sustainability. Environmental ethicists have extensively debated the grounds, contents and implications of our moral obligations to nonhuman nature, offering up different notions of an 'environmental ethic' with the presumption that, if humans adopt such an environmental ethic, they will then engage in less environmentally damaging behaviours. We assess this presumption, drawing on psychological research to discuss whether or under (...) what conditions an environmental ethic might engender pro-environmental behaviour. We focus discussion on three lines of scholarship in the environmental ethics literature, on 1) intrinsic value, 2) care ethics, and 3) the land ethic. We conclude by commenting generally on both the limits and transformative potential of an environmental ethic in its larger sociocultural context. (shrink)

Though largely a theoretical endeavour, environmental ethics also has a practical agenda to help humans achieve environmental sustainability. Environmental ethicists have extensively debated the grounds, contents and implications of our moral obligations to nonhuman nature, offering up different notions of an 'environmental ethic' with the presumption that, if humans adopt such an environmental ethic, they will then engage in less environmentally damaging behaviours. We assess this presumption, drawing on psychological research to discuss whether or under (...) what conditions an environmental ethic might engender pro-environmental behaviour. We focus discussion on three lines of scholarship in the environmental ethics literature, on 1) intrinsic value, 2) care ethics, and 3) the land ethic. We conclude by commenting generally on both the limits and transformative potential of an environmental ethic in its larger sociocultural context. (shrink)

This article shows how environmental and ambient constructions were used to legitimate traditional gender roles in twentieth-century Europe and the United States. It demonstrates the normative and reactionary character of influential psychological and psychoanalytic theories of childhood and personality development, which instructed women to create, even embody social and emotional environments. This body of thought spanned diverse psychoanalytic schools and extended across generations of psychological experts. They put forth a notion of feminine “environmentality” postulating a woman’s disposition to create, (...) even personify an environment that facilitated normal child development as well as a man’s professional success—and, ultimately, sustained the social order. This construction of women as essentially environmental beings bound them to matrimony and full-time, at-home motherhood, fixing their lives in space and time. It provided a powerful weapon against alternative life-styles and feminist critiques, suggesting that leading conceptions of development, well-being, and identity were not just androcentric, but indeed anti-feminist. (shrink)

The current experiments examine mental health clinicians’ beliefs about biological, psychological, and environmental bases of the DSM‐IV‐TR mental disorders and the consequences of those causal beliefs for judging treatment effectiveness. Study 1 found a large negative correlation between clinicians’ beliefs about biological bases and environmental/psychological bases, suggesting that clinicians conceptualize mental disorders along a single continuum spanning from highly biological disorders (e.g., autistic disorder) to highly nonbiological disorders (e.g., adjustment disorders). Study 2 replicated this finding by having clinicians (...) list what they thought were the specific causes of nine familiar mental disorders and rate their bio–psycho–environmental bases. Study 3 further found that clinicians believe medication to be more effective for biologically based mental disorders and psychotherapy to be more effective for psychosocially based mental disorders. These results demonstrate that even expert mental health clinicians make strong distinctions between psychological and biological phenomena. (shrink)

Synthesizing theories of ethical leadership, psychological climate, pro-environmental behavior, and gender, first, we proposed and tested a model linking supervisors’ ethical leadership and organizational environmental citizenship behavior via green psychological climate. Then we tested the moderating effect of gender on the indirect (via green psychological environment) relationship between supervisors’ ethical leadership and organizational environmental citizenship behavior. Time-lagged (three waves, two months apart) survey data were collected from 447 employees in various manufacturing and service sector firms operating in (...) China. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, bootstrapping, and multi-group technique to test the hypothesized relationships. The results showed a positive relationship between employee ratings of supervisors’ ethical leadership and organizational environmental citizenship behavior. Moreover, green psychological climate mediates the relationship between supervisors’ ethical leadership and organizational environmental citizenship behavior. Importantly, the multi-group analysis revealed that gender moderates the indirect relationship (via green psychological climate) between supervisors’ ethical leadership and organizational environmental citizenship behavior. The study carries useful practical implications for policymakers and managers concerned about environmental sustainability. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

We now have good reason to worry that many coastal cities will be flooded by the end of the century. How should we confront this possibility (or inevitability)? What attitudes should we adopt to impending inundation of such magnitude? In the case of place-loss due to anthropogenic climate change, I argue that there may ultimately be something fitting about letting go, both thinking prospectively, when the likelihood of preservation is bleak, and retrospectively, when we reflect on our inability to prevent (...) destruction. I then explore some of the ethical complications of this response. (shrink)

Recent critics (Andrew Light, Bryan Norton, Anthony Weston, and Bruce Morito, among others) have argued that we should give up talk of intrinsic value in general and that of nature in particular. While earlier theorists might have overestimated the importance of intrinsic value, these recent critics underestimate its importance. Claims about a thing’s intrinsic value are claims about the distinctive way in which we have reason to care about that thing. If we understand intrinsic value in this manner, we can (...) capture the core claims that environmentalists want to make about nature while avoiding the worries raised by contemporary critics. Since the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value plays a critical role in our understanding of the different ways that we do and should care about things, moral psychology, ethical theory in general, and environmental ethics in particular shouldn’t give up on the concept of intrinsic value. (shrink)

The environment can elicit biological responses such as oxidative stress (OS) and inflammation as a consequence of chemical, physical, or psychological changes. As population studies are essential for establishing these environment-organism interactions, biomarkers of OS or inflammation are critical in formulating mechanistic hypotheses. By using examples of stress induced by various mechanisms, we focus on the biomarkers that have been used to assess OS and inflammation in these conditions. We discuss the difference between biomarkers that are the result of a (...) chemical reaction (such as lipid peroxides or oxidized proteins that are a result of the reaction of molecules with reactive oxygen species) and those that represent the biological response to stress, such as the transcription factor NRF2 or inflammation and inflammatory cytokines. The high-throughput and holistic approaches to biomarker discovery used extensively in large-scale molecular epidemiological exposome are also discussed in the context of human exposure to environmental stressors. We propose to consider the role of biomarkers as signs and to distinguish between signs that are just indicators of biological processes and proxies that one can interact with and modify the disease process. (shrink)

This book brings together a collection of essays written by scholars inspired by Eugene Gendlin's work, particularly those interested in thinking with and beyond Gendlin for the sake of a global community facing significant crises. The contributors take inspiration from Gendlin's philosophy of the implicit, and his theoretical approach to psychology. The essays engage with Gendlin's ideas for our era, including critiques and corrections as well as extrapolations of his work. Gendlin himself worried that knowing about a problem is (...) too often conflated with actions that might lead to change; the essays in this book point to a form of understanding that is activated, an embodied and immediate way of thinking about today's problems. Throughout the volume, the contributors creatively engage with Gendlin's work and its applicability to the complex, pressing crises of our time: the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental/climate issues, racism, sexism, economic inequality, and other factors threatening human persons and communities. Gendlin's theoretical approach to psychology is naturally interdisciplinary, making this book an essential read for anyone interested in moving to the boundaries where psychology meets philosophy, theology, art, environmental studies, science, and technology, and much more. (shrink)

Environmental pragmatism is routinely characterised as an environmental philosophy that rejects the traditional values questions within environmental ethics. Critics of environmental pragmatism, in turn, complain that it cannot be characterised as an environmental philosophy, since it evades precisely the philosophical issues with which environmental philosophers are supposed to engage. This essay works to defend environmental pragmatism against the charge that it necessarily evades the central questions of environmental ethics. I argue that (...) class='Hi'>environmental pragmatism need not reject foundational questions regarding values and nature; however, I contend that the meaningfulness of such questions to a pragmatist depends firstly on reframing them in terms of a valuing relation, and secondly on a turn to the insights of moral psychology. (shrink)

For many years, psychological–clinical research has been aiming at studying the Mafia from different viewpoints: the man of honor's inner world, relational and psychopathological structures of his family matrices, connections between inner and social worlds, interiorized and social rules. Today, however, a complex phenomenon has come to light, which concerns the great connection between the Mafia and financial crime, and for us as researchers it is very interesting and complicated to analyze, because it involves the study of psychological peculiarities that (...) can be specifically found in the numerous illegalities. The crossbreeding of the various criminalities, which are always more interacting and merging and less isolated, makes this picture even more complex. (shrink)

Leadership styles, especially empowering leadership, affect the psychological relationship between employees and organizations, and then affect employees’ positive behavior in the organization. In this research, we studied the effects of empowering leadership and psychological distance on employees’ pro-environmental behavior and explored the mechanism of green organizational climate. By adopting correlation analysis, statistical analysis, and regression analysis, we conducted a multisource field study of 873 valid employee questionnaires to verify our theoretical model. The results showed that empowering leadership had a (...) significant positive impact on psychological distance and employees’ pro-environmental behavior; and psychological distance played a partly intermediation role in the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, GOC can promote employees’ pro-environmental behavior, but it cannot regulate between psychological distance and employees’ pro-environmental behavior. The findings obtained some intriguing insights that could help to better guide employees toward pro-environmental behavior. (shrink)

Today it is widely recognized that we face urgent and serious environmental problems and we know much about them, yet we do very little. What explains this lack of motivation and change? Why is it so hard to change our lives? This book addresses this question by means of a philosophical inquiry into the conditions of possibility for environmental change. It discusses how we can become more motivated to do environmental good and what kind of knowledge we (...) need for this, and explores the relations between motivation, knowledge, and modernity. After reviewing a broad range of possible philosophical and psychological responses to environmental apathy and inertia, the author argues for moving away from a modern focus on either detached reason and control or the natural, the sentiments, and the authentic, both of which make possible disengaging and alienating modes of relating to our environment. Instead he develops the notion of environmental skill: a concept that bridges the gap between knowledge and action, re-interprets environmental virtue, and suggests an environmental ethics centered on experience, know-how and skillful engagement with our environment. The author then explores the implications of this ethics for our lives: it changes the way we think about, and deal with, health, food, animals, energy, climate change, politics, and technology. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have been arguing for decades that swift action to protect our natural environment is morally paramount, and that our concern for the environment should go beyond its importance for human welfare. It might be thought that the widespread acceptance of moral anti-realism would undermine the aims of environmental ethicists. One reason is that recent empirical studies purport to show that moral realists are more likely to act on the basis of their ethical convictions than anti-realists. In (...) addition, it is sometimes argued that only moral realists can countenance the claim that nature is intrinsically valuable. Against this, we argue that the acceptance of moral anti-realism is no threat to the environmentalist cause. We argue, further, that the acceptance of moral realism is potentially an obstacle to delivering on a third core environmental ethicist demand: namely, that successful action on climate change and environmental destruction requires us to change some of our commonly-held ethical views and to achieve a workable consensus. (shrink)

Why do some types of settings and some combinations of sensory information induce a sense of dread in humans? This article brings empirical evidence from psychological research to bear on the experience of horror, and explains why the tried-and-true horror devices intuitively employed by writers and filmmakers work so well. Natural selection has favored individuals who gravitated toward environments containing the “right” physical and psychological features and avoided those which posed a threat. Places that contain a bad mix of these (...) features induce unpleasant feelings of dread and fear, and therefore have become important ingredients of the settings for horror fiction and films. This article ap­plies McAndrew and Koehnke’s theory of creepiness to the study of classic horror settings and explores the role played by architecture, isolation, association with death, and other environmental qualities in the experience of creepiness and dread. (shrink)

This paper tries to characterize the factors determining human relations with its environment and to identify the drives of those behavioral patterns and “praxis”. One scrutinizes the physiological and psychological factors that influence those drives, and tries to determine ways of overriding instinctive drives in favor of rational, sustainable ones. It focuses its attention on the way the different ecosystemic, economic and socio-cultural systems work, and pin-points the critical issues in view of the development of sustainable behavioral patterns. Also the (...) values that must build the new behavioral paradigm, as well as the ways to ensure the evolutionary quantum-leap necessary to ensure this sustainable condition, and the fulfilment, at every level, the different needs of humans and human societies, are analyzed. In conclusion, it stresses the fact that any reliable and long lasting change towards a sustainable behavior must start at the individual and the close social groups levels, and of the development of new factors of self-fulfillment and gratification, able to support and foster that change. The proposed epistemological approach is particularly innovative, precisely because of this emphasis on the individual drives and the way they determine the global patterns of environmental use, as well as the way they can evolve into a more rational character. In short, the paper focuses itself in the way man can evolve from its natural animal instincts and drives toward more rational ones, humanizing its behavior and turning, therefore, into an able actor of the process of sustainability building. (shrink)

Environmental disasters like Bhopal have a way of calling attention to environmental and corporate ethical issues. This paper discusses these issues in terms of a livable environment as an inalienable right and of corporate responsibility as an philosophical and social psychological disposition that enables corporations to respect that right. The corporate conscience is compared to the individual conscience and analyzed according to the moral development theories of Lawrence Kohlberg. Its moral development is recognized as problematic from the cited (...) performance records of some leading multinational corporations and from the anti-environmental lobbying efforts of the chemical industry itself. Outreach programs in environmental health associated with research projects in corporate ethics are suggested to develop the corporate conscience for preserving environmental integrity through corporate responsibility. (shrink)

Recently, international funding agencies and practitioners in the area of corporate social responsibility and small and medium enterprises have argued that microfinance institutions could promote the adoption of environmentally friendly business practices in microenterprises in developing countries. This article explores the potential and limitations of MFIs in promoting the spread of environmental risk management techniques and practices in microenterprises using a case study of an MFI-sponsored pilot program in this area in El Salvador. The author argues that caution should (...) be exercised about the role that MFIs can play in relation to inducing change to the environmentally harmful practices of micro-entrepreneurs. In fact, this study reveals that the MFI had some difficulties in building internal skills and reconciling its environmental and performance objectives, limiting its ability to assist microenterprises in the area of environmental management. Furthermore, the pilot program, as it was designed, did not sufficiently take into account the psychological and financial barriers that constrain micro-entrepreneurs’ capacity to engage in any meaningful environmental behavior change. Finally, factors such as the lack of an adequate legal framework and local infrastructure also countered the effort of the MFI and limited the potential of microenterprises for effectively engaging in environmental risk management practices. The article concludes by outlining the implications of this analysis for future research, policy, and practice in this area. (shrink)

As overdevelopment, noise pollution, and land use become considerations in modern life, we become more thoughtful of the quality of our environments, whether the space is for recreation, education, or residential living. Demonstrating how such tenets as "to each his own" have contributed to the demise of our public spaces, Environmental Aesthetics is the first integrated study of this emerging field. Beginning with a brief history of aesthetics, the author explores the concept of landscape, the psychology of human-environment (...) relations, the influences of literary, artistic and legal activism, and the roles of public policy and of planning. Clearly written and lavishly illustrated, the book will prove invaluable to anyone interested in how the physical environment can and should be improved. (shrink)

The complexity and emotional/psychological responses to the environmental challenges of the 21st century has led to the coining and development of new words and concepts that, for some people, better describe how they are personally grappling with anthropogenic ecosystem damage and climate breakdown. This paper identifies some of the more commonly used environmental neologisms within scholarly literature and evaluates their usefulness and contradictions for those influenced by the virtue ethics promoted by the ancient Stoics and the Catholic Church. (...) We find that environmental neologisms, when framed by these philosophical and/or theological ideas, offer an alternative and, ultimately, helpful means to contemplate the nature of what might be considered an environmental crisis and how best we might address, or at least, mitigate it, as conscientious spiritual human beings. (shrink)

A crucial question for artificial cognition systems is what meaning is and how it arises. In pursuit of that question, this paper extends earlier work in which we show that emergence of simple signaling in biologically inspired models using arrays of locally interactive agents. Communities of "communicators" develop in an environment of wandering food sources and predators using any of a variety of mechanisms: imitation of successful neighbors, localized genetic algorithms and partial neural net training on successful neighbors. Here we (...) focus on environmental variability, comparing results for environments with (a) constant resources, (b) random resources, and (c) cycles of "boom and bust." In both simple and complex models across all three mechanisms of strategy change, the emergence of communication is strongly favored by cycles of "boom and bust." These results are particularly intriguing given the importance of environmental variability in fields as diverse as psychology, ecology and cultural anthropology. (shrink)

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has been a mere victim of climate change in recent years. The country needs emergency measures at every level to mitigate environmental dilapidation. The role of enterprises in the country’s environmental efforts is critical. In this regard, the hotel sector is known for its outsized carbon footprint. Knowing this, the current study aims to improve a hotel enterprise’s environmental performance as an outcome of corporate social responsibility. The study also considers the mediating (...) role of pro-environmental behavior of employees and the moderating role of altruistic values. A hypothesized model was developed, which was validated by employing the structural equation modeling technique. The empirical results confirmed that CSR, directly and indirectly, positively induces the ENP of a hotel enterprise. Whereas the conditional indirect role of ALT was also found significant. The study offers different implications for theory and practice, among which one important takeaway for the hotel sector is to realize the importance of employees to spur ENP of a hotel enterprise through their eco-friendly behavior. At the same time, the current work also advances the theory by highlighting the moderating role of ALT between the indirect relationship of CSR and ENP. (shrink)

In this book Harry Heft examines the historical and theoretical foundations of James J. Gibson's ecological psychology in 20th century thought, and in turn, integrates ecological psychology and analyses of sociocultural processes. A thesis of the book is that knowing is rooted in the direct experience of meaningful environmental objects and events present in individual-environment processes and at the level of collective, social settings. Ecological Psychology in Context: *traces the primary lineage of Gibson's ecological approach to (...) William James's philosophy of radical empiricism; *illuminates how the work of James's student and Gibson's mentor, E.B. Holt, served as a catalyst for the development of Gibson's framework and as a bridge to James's work; *reveals how ecological psychology reciprocally can advance Jamesian studies by resolving some of the theoretical difficulties that kept James from fully realizing a realist philosophy; *broadens the scope of Gibson's framework by proposing a synthesis between it and the ecological program of Roger Barker, who discovered complex systems operating at the level of collective, social processes; *demonstrates ways in which the psychological domain can be extended to properties of the environment rendering its features meaningful, publicly accessible, and distributed across person-environment processes; and *shows how Gibson's work points the way toward overcoming the gap between experimental psychology and the humanities. Intended for scholars and students in the areas of ecological and environmental psychology, theoretical and historical psychology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. (shrink)

The challenge of convincing people to change their eating habits towards more environmentally sustainable food consumption (ESFC) patterns is becoming increasingly pressing. Food preferences, choices and eating habits are notoriously hard to change as they are a central aspect of people’s lifestyles and their socio-cultural environment. Many people already hold positive attitudes towards sustainable food, but the notable gap between favorable attitudes and actual purchase and consumption of more sustainable food products remains to be bridged. The current work aims to (...) 1) present a comprehensive theoretical framework for future research on ESFC, and 2) highlight behavioral solutions for environmental challenges in the food domain from an interdisciplinary perspective. First, starting from the premise that food consumption is deliberately or unintentionally directed at attaining goals, a goal-directed framework for understanding and influencing ESFC is built. To engage in goal-directed behavior, people typically go through a series of sequential steps. The proposed theoretical framework makes explicit the sequential steps or hurdles that need to be taken for consumers to engage in ESFC. Consumers need to positively value the environment, discern a discrepancy between the desired versus the actual state of the environment, opt for action to reduce the experienced discrepancy, intend to engage in behavior that is expected to bring them closer to the desired end state, and act in accordance with their intention. Second, a critical review of the literature on mechanisms that underlie and explain ESFC (or the lack thereof) in high-income countries is presented and integrated into the goal-directed framework. This contribution thus combines a top-down conceptualization with a bottom-up literature review; it identifies and discusses factors that might hold people back from ESFC and interventions that might promote ESFC; and it reveals knowledge gaps as well as insights on how to encourage both short- and long-term ESFC by confronting extant literature with the theoretical framework. Altogether, the analysis yields a set of 33 future research questions in the interdisciplinary food domain that deserve to be addressed with the aim of fostering ESFC in the short and long term. (shrink)

In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the medical (...) environment (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research. (shrink)

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, (...) including mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises. (shrink)

Litigation and mediation offer substantive and important approaches toward resolving environmental disputes. Yet as currently practiced both approaches have shortcomings. For example, litigation often promotes divisive, adversarial relationships. Mediation often yields untenable ground given the seriousness of many environmental problems. This paper offers a reconception of both approaches. It is argued that both litigation and mediation need to be embedded within a more ethically comprehensive context, one of 'courting ethical community'. Discussion focuses on what it means in this (...) sense to court, on what defines and bounds the ethical, and how courting depends on understanding not only differences but commonalities in people's environmental views and values. (shrink)