Beyond Green Consumerism: Uncovering the Motivations of Green Citizenship

Individual behavior change is a necessary condition for making a positive societal transition to a resourceconstrained future. Because we live on a planet with finite resources, behavior change interventions need to move beyond creating “green consumers” and instead foster and support “green citizens.” Green consumerism has proven largely ineffective in curbing collective rates of consumption; despite improved efficiencies and greenandlean social norms and policies, society’s aggregate resource and energy usage continues to climb. There is an urgent need to promote agency and selfsufficiency with regard to individual conservation behaviors, while simultaneously promoting mindfulness of collective impacts on the planet. Based on