The Interaction of Values and Norms to Promote Sustainable Consumption and Production

Overview Research on environmental behaviour has mainly targeted individuals or small groups. However, a large share of the environmental impact of consumption is indirect (e., that is, it depends on priorities and practices in the line of activities from raw material extraction through production and distribution of final products and services to individuals and households. For example, US data (Stern, Young, & Druckman, 1992) show that the individual/household sector is only responsible for one third of all fossil fuel consumed in the United States, while the industrial and commercial sector accounts for the other two thirds. Thus, it is important to understand environmentally relevant decisions and behaviours of individuals, not only as consumers, but also as employees in and, in particular, as managers of companies and organisations. The present study draws on earlier findings on environmentally significant individual behaviour, but extend them to the organisational level. Some of the most cited – and active – researchers in the field of environmentally significant individual behaviour, Paul Stern, Thomas Dietz, and their colleagues (1999) have proposed a Value-Belief-Norm theory (VBN) for the relationship between values, norms and behaviour. Values are by definition general and abstract in nature (Schwartz, 1992). This implies that the influence of value priorities on evaluations and actions in the environmental and political domains may be indirect. The model assumes that the effect of values on behaviour is mediated through basic beliefs and pro-environmental personal norms. The belief part in the VBN model refers to basic beliefs about one self and the world, what is sometimes called worldview (e.g., Rohan, 2000). Specifically, Stern et al. (1999) refer to the view that the biosphere is fragile and that its health is dependent on human activity, a view that Dunlap