The Importance of Environmental Knowledge for Private and Public Sphere Pro-Environmental Behavior: Modifying the Value-Belief-Norm Theory

Genovaitė Liobikienė and Mykolas Simas Poškus
Additional contact information
Genovaitė Liobikienė: Department of Environmental Sciences, Vytautas Magnus University, LT-44404 Kaunas, Lithuania
Mykolas Simas Poškus: Institute of Psychology, Mykolas Romeris University, LT-08303 Vilnius, Lithuania

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 12, 1-19

Abstract: The promotion of pro-environmental behavior is regarded as very important in solving environmental problems. The Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory usually emphasizes internal factors; however, we have transformed this theory by including the environmental knowledge as an external factor. The results showed that action-related environmental knowledge was related to the ecological worldview and directly influenced the private sphere behavior. The ecological worldview, which in this paper was operationalized as environmental concern, had a direct effect on public sphere behavior and an indirect effect on private behavior through awareness of behavioral consequences. Thus, in this paper we revealed how specific environmental knowledge influenced pro-environmental behavior. We also suggest that it is important to educate people about local and global environmental problems, about the impact of behavior on the environment not only in private but also in the public sphere, and to foster the ecocentrism, as well. In addition, we revealed the meaning and necessity of education for environmental citizenship.

Keywords: environmental knowledge; environmental concern; pro-environmental behavior; Value-Belief-Norm theory; environmental education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/12/3324/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/12/3324/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:12:p:3324-:d:240259

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().