Hofstra, Sophie (2025) The motivating effect of reasons on pro-environmental behavior. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
The values-as-truism principle from Maio and colleagues (2001) has been applied to numerous values. This study takes this principle into account and applies it to biospheric values. It investigates the effect of cognitive support for biospheric values on pro-environmental behavior (PEB). Furthermore, it takes a look into whether locus of control moderates this relationship. Building on the values-as-truism principle, we hypothesize that participants who provide reasons for their biospheric values and thus provide cognitive support would provide greater PEB, as measured by their willingness to volunteer for a made-up litter-picking event. Furthermore, we hypothesize that locus of control moderates this effect. We conducted an online experiment with 66 participants who were either assigned to a reason-salient condition, the experimental condition, or a value-salient condition, the control condition. In the experimental condition, people had to write down reasons for why or why not biospheric values were important to them, whereas in the control condition they rated their feelings towards the value. Results from the independent samples t-test indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Additionally, the regression analyses indicated that locus of control did not significantly improve the model, since only a small percentage of the variance was explained by the model. These findings suggest that while cognitive support may theoretically increase pro-environmental behavior, the current evidence does not support its efficacy in increasing PEB or that locus of control plays a moderating role in this context. The study raises questions about the complexities of translating values into pro-environmental actions and highlights the need for further research to explore underlying factors influencing PEB.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
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| Supervisor name: | Sharpe, E.J. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | None [Bachelor Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Feb 2025 13:37 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Feb 2025 13:37 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4721 |
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