 How Green Self Image is Related to Subjective Well-Being: Pro-Environmental Values as a Social NormHeinz Welsch and Jan Kühling () Ecological Economics, 2018, vol. 149, issue C, 105-119 Abstract: Recent literature has found that individuals holding a greener self-image display higher levels of life satisfaction. We extend the single-country setting of that research to a transnational perspective and explore whether a relationship exists between green self-image (GSI) and life satisfaction (LS), both European-wide and at the national level. In order to explain differences in the GSI-LS relationship across nations and time, we study the role of pro-environmental values as a shared social norm. We find a significantly positive GSI-LS relationship in a pool of 35 European countries and in the majority of individual countries. In addition, we show that the well-being benefit of holding a green self-image is greater in societies that display more unanimity with respect to pro-environmental attitudes. Invoking the notion of social norms as shared agreements about what is appropriate and inappropriate, we take the latter finding to indicate that part of the well-being benefit from holding pro-environmental values derives from conformity to a social norm. Keywords: Green self-image; Subjective well-being; Life satisfaction; Social norm; Social division (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:149:y:2018:i:c:p:105-119 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.03.002 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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