What does psychology contribute to the understanding of societal transformation? A discussion of motives for collective pro-environmental action

Pro-environmental movements organise collective strikes for actions to limit the global temperature rise and characterise lack of pro-environmental policies as immoral. Against this background, the present dissertation comprises three manuscripts that (1) connect environmental psychological research to a meta-theory on societal transformation and based on this theoretical paradigm, (2) systematically investigate predictors of collective pro-environmental action. Manuscripts one and two discuss the social identity approach as a psychological theory for social transformation (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Manuscript one then suggests three research lines for transformation-oriented research in environmental psychology that focus on (1) applying established models of collective action to collective pro-environmental action, (2) investigating the emergence of pro-environmental activist identities and (3) studying the connections between moral beliefs and collective pro-environmental action. Building on the first manuscript, manuscript two confirms the central role of opinion-based pro-environmental social identity for collective pro-environmental action. Manuscript three draws on the encapsulation model of social identity in collective action (Thomas et al., 2009; Thomas et al., 2012) for explaining emerging collective action against state policies. Further, it empirically confirms the amplifying effect of violation of moral beliefs for negative group-based emotion in collective action. The results of these studies emphasise the importance of pro-environmental social identity for collective pro-environmental behaviour and discuss the influence of moral beliefs. The dissertation concludes with the prospect that moral beliefs as group-boundary transcending constructs can potentially be a core for superordinate pro-environmental identities to guide pro-environmental action, suggesting three topics for future transformation-oriented research in environmental psychology.

Level thesis:degree_level

thesis.doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher

Universität Bielefeld

Year

2022

Author dc:creator

• Schulte, Maxie

Repository record source_url

https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2962467

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:pub.uni-bielefeld.de:2962467