The positive psychology of sustainability

Víctor Corral Verdugo ()

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2012, vol. 14, issue 5, 666 pages

Abstract: As in most areas of psychology, a negative bias permeates the study of the subject of Conservation Psychology: sustainable behavior (SB). SB constitutes the set of actions aimed at protecting the socio-physical environment. This behavior is sometimes addressed as having negative antecedent-instigators (fear, guilt, shame), activated to avoid undesirable outcomes from environmental degradation. Also, psycho-environmental researchers often visualize negative psychological consequences (discomfort, inconvenience, sacrifice) of SB. Yet, a number of studies reveal that positive psychological antecedents (capacities, emotions, virtues and strengths) as well as positive psychological consequences (satisfaction, psychological well-being, and happiness) of SB are also significant determinants of pro-environmental actions. In this paper, I argue that SB is positive behavior originated by positive dispositional factors, and maintained by psychological benefits. By combining the emergent fields of positive psychology and the psychology of sustainability, an alternative approach for the study of the positive psychology of sustainable behavior is outlined. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Keywords: Sustainability; Positive psychology; Environmental psychology; Sustainable behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10668-012-9346-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:endesu:v:14:y:2012:i:5:p:651-666

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-012-9346-8

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().