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How Our Identities Encourage Pro-Environmental Behavior
or discourage environmentally damaging behavior
Credit: This article is based on the scientific article “How do I see myself? A systematic review of identities in pro‐environmental behavior research” by Udall et al. (Full citations and link available at the end of the article)
Tackling the many global environmental issues is an important goal for a more sustainable future. To reach these goals, consumers’ behavior plays an important role. When individuals change their consumption patterns, they can minimize the damage and even benefit the environment in many different ways. This is called pro-environmental behavior. Examples of minimizing damage are replacing energy-intensive household devices with more energy-efficient devices and showering less long. Examples of creating a benefit for the environment are refraining from purchasing environmentally harmful products and donating money to environmental charities. (More simple examples of what we can do as individuals)
As such individual actions are easy to take, but not everyone has adopted pro-environmental behavior yet, an important question is what encourages such behavior. One factor is our identity, which means how we see ourselves. This is how different types of identity encourage pro-environmental behavior:
