Table Of ContentPSYCHOLOGY OF
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
PSYCHOLOGY OF
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
edited by
Peter Schmuck
Technische Universitat Berlin
Berlin
Wesley P. Schultz
California State University
San Marcos, California
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
ISBN 978-1-4613-5342-3 ISBN 978-1-4615-0995-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-0995-0
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Copyright © 2002 by Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2002
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CONTENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS VII
PREFACE' IX
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; 1
AND HOW DO WE GET THERE?
Chapter 1. Sustainable Development as a Challenge for 3
Psychology
Peter Schmuck & P. Wesley Schultz
Chapter 2. The Next Revolution: Sustainability 19
Doug McKenzie-Mohr
Chapter 3. Social Dilemmas and Sustainability: Promoting 37
Peoples' Motivation to "Cooperate With the Future"
Richard Osbaldiston & Kennon M Sheldon
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN 59
SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIOR
Chapter 4. Inclusion With Nature: The Psychology of 61
Human-Nature Relations
P. Wesley Schultz
Chapter 5. (En)Gendering Sustainable Development 79
Deborah Du Nann Winter
Chapter 6. Sustainable Development and Emotions 97
Elisabeth Kals & Jiirgen Maes
Chapter 7. Why do People Act in Sustainable Ways? Results 123
of an Empirical Survey of Lifestyle Pioneers
Lars Degenhardt
VI
CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY 149
Chapter 8. Self, Culture, and Sustainable Development 151
Valdiney V. Gouveia
Chapter 9. Partnerships for Sustainability: Psychology for Ecology 175
Peter H Cock
Chapter 10. Sustainable Wildlife Utilization in Africa: A Contest 197
Between Scientific Understanding and Human Nature
Johan T. du Toit
Chapter 11. Environmental Sustainability by Sociocognitive 209
Deceleration of Population Growth
Albert Bandura
EXEMPLARY PROJECTS IN SUSTAINABLE 239
DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 12. Motivating Collective Action: Converting to 241
Sustainable Energy Sources in a German Community
Swantje Eigner & Peter Schmuck
Chapter 13. Which Kind of Sustainability for a Social 257
Environmental Psychology?
Bernardo Jimenez-Dominguez
Chapter 14. Using Organized Consumer Action to Foster 277
S ustainability
Monroe Friedman
CONCLUSION 299
Chapter 15. Summarizing Sustainability Issues and Research 301
Approaches
Stuart Oskamp
SUBJECT INDEX 325
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Bandnra, Albert, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2130, USA
[email protected]
Cock, Peter, Graduate School of Environmental Science, Monash University,
Vic 3800, AUSTRALIA
[email protected]
Degenhardt, Lars, University Gottingen, Interdisciplinary Center for
Sustainable Development, Goldschmidtstr. 1, 37077 Gottingen, GERMANY
[email protected]
du Toit, Johan T., Mammal Research Institute, University of Pretoria, Pretoria
0002, SOUTH AFRICA
jtdutoit~oology. up.ac.za
Eigner, Swantje, University Gottingen, Interdisciplinary Center for
Sustainable Development, Goldschmidtstr. 1, 37077 Gottingen, GERMANY
[email protected]
Friedman, Monroe, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197, USA
psyJ [email protected]
Gouveia, Valdiney V., Universidade Federal da Paraiba, CCHLA,
Departamento de Psicologia, 58059-900 Joao Pessoa, PB, BRASIL
vvgouve [email protected]. br
Jimenez-Dominguez, Bernardo, Urban. Studies Center (CEUR) of the
University of Guadalajara., Garibaldi 1859, CP 44650, Guadalajara, MEXICO
[email protected]
Kals, Elisabeth, University of Trier, Fachbereich 1 - Psychologie, 54286
Trier, GERMANY
[email protected]
Maes, Jiirgen, University of Trier, Fachbereich 1 - Psychologie, 54286 Trier,
GERMANY
[email protected]
VIII
McKenzie-Mohr, Doug, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, N.B. E3B 5G3,
CANADA
[email protected]
Osbaldiston, Richard, Department of Psychological Sciences, McAlester
Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
[email protected]
Oskamp, Stuart, School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences,
Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711, USA
stuart. [email protected]
Pol, Enric, University of Barcelona, Department of Social Psychology, P. Vall
d'Hebron 171,08035 Barcelona, SPAIN
[email protected]
Schmuck, Peter, Technical University Berlin, Department of Psychology,
Franklinstr. 28, FR 3-8, 10587 Berlin, GERMANY
[email protected]
Schultz, Wesley, Department of Psychology, California State University, San
Marcos, CA 92096, USA
[email protected]
Sheldon, Ken, Department of Psychological Sciences, McAlester Hall,
University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
[email protected]
Winter, Deborah Du Nann, Department of Psychology, Whitman College,
Walla Walla, Wa. 99362, USA
[email protected]
PREFACE
The notion of expanding the model of occidental development to the entire
planet is not possible. There simply are not enough natural resources on planet
earth to allow it. For this reason, taking the steps necessary to move toward
sustainable development is not one option among many, but rather it is the only
option. The chapters in this book offer a range of perspectives about the
psychological foundations and paths to sustainability. What emerges from these
chapters is a resounding conclusion that the dominant model of growth,
consumption, and waste cannot continue and that alternatives are possible.
From traditional psychological research, we know (or we believe that
we know) a great deal about how to influence people's behavior. However, as
we have forgotten all too many times before, the environment (natural,
technological, available resources, and a favorable social climate) is an
important factor that must be considered in motivating behavior. Knowledge is
centered in people's behavior as individuals, rather than in the manager and
policy makers' responsibilities, as Stern and Oskamp emphasized in their
chapter in the Handbook ofE nvironmental Psychology.
The dominant model of "well meaning environmental managers" is
centered on the rationality of the human being. Policies are based on the
assumption that it is enough to give information. Managers often expect
changes in the attitudes and behavior of the individuals to result from
disseminated information. From psychology we know that human beings like to
reason, but are not always rational. This implies that emotions and affect playa
major role in behavior, as Kals and Maes outline in their chapter. Another
important factor often forgotten is social influence. If we do not provide the
right environment and resources, but allow it all to depend on the good will of
the citizens, we will be asking them to go above and beyond the call of duty.
This will increase the risk overburdening them, which may inhibit their progress
and cause "ecofatigue." As Friedman argues in his chapter, organized consumer
action may be undertaken to serve sustainability if its management is well
founded on cognitive and motivational knowledge.
Social cohesion, the perception of equality, and of the inter and i~tra
generation solidarity are essential elements in the advance toward sustainability,
as we have shown in the project "City-Identity-Sustainability" which was
initiated in 1996, and discussed in this volume by Jimenez. Moreover, after
some "minimals of survival" are reached, social cohesion is more important
than the economic level of a community. In our society, there are more
individualized forces at work than forces of cohesion, which would bring about
what Castells calls "individual strategies of survival."
In the last decades, environmentalism has been progressively emptied
of its initial ideological and social commitment. It remains more and more as a
technical problem that can be solved with adequate technology. For McKenzie-
x
Mohr (in this volume) "the Sustainability Revolution" is the third big human
revolution. It reposes the environmental matter on the social dimensions of
equity and solidarity. For me, it's a "revolution from the top", as I explain in the
new Handbook of Environmental Psychology (2002). But perhaps we can talk
about it better as a "Sandwich Revolution." "Sandwich Revolution" because it
is formally promoted from the top of the society by socially aware institutions.
They promulgate declarations of good principles, which are turned into laws -
laws that afterward are not always fully applied. From the bottom, it is
promoted by the new social movements like ecologists who have been able to
make their voices heard through the masses ofNGO's. In the middle there is the
citizen, more or less concerned with his/her own survival, in some cases with
the non-solidarity maintenance of a good quality of life already attained
(understood more as level of life than as a personal, social or ecological
balance).
In this book, suggestions for the abatement of soaring population
growth are contributed by Bandura, whereas lifestyles and sustainability are
discussed in the chapter by Degenhardt. Osbaldiston and Sheldon offer
definitions of sustainabilityand recommendations for policy-makers, taken
from social dilemma experiments -recommendations that have to take into
account the fact that the building environment has an strong impact on implicit
connections that individuals make between self and nature, as outlined by
Schultz.
This present volume not only attends to the individual determining
factors of behavior, but it also adopts a vision and a level of analysis that
transcends the individual, reaching the social and structural levels of society.
For instance, Gouveia discusses some current cultural indicators of
sustainability and their relationship with values; Cock outlines the role of
ecopsychology in North-South relations and du Toit analyzes specificities of
rural Africa. The structural analyses also include the gendered dimension of
economic development, as Winter outlines in her chapter.
The sustainability problem is a result of individual and collective
human behavior. It cannot be treated merely as an economic or technological
problem, without considering the mechanisms that intervene on the behavioral
side of it. Eigner and Schmuck combine both aspects in their reported approach
to introduce renewable energy sources. Oskamp contributes a global vision in
the concluding chapter.
Peter Schmuck's and Wesley Schultz's initiative to publish this book,
putting together a range of psychological approaches, experiences and
contributions from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Mexico, United States,
and South Africa, is a very good and welcomed initiative to help move us
toward sustainable development.
Enric Pol, Barcelona, 2002
PART ONE
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT;
AND HOW DO WE GET THERE?
