Morality and Prosocial Behavior: the Role of Awareness, Responsibility and Norms in the Norm Activation Model

This paper examines the relationships between variables included in the Norm Activation Model of prosocial behaviour (NAM). Specifically, we evaluate the strength of two commonly used interpretations of this model, namely the NAM as a mediator model and the NAM as a moderator model. Five studies focussing on a variety of prosocial intentions and behaviours provide most support for the NAM as a mediator model. Furthermore, these studies validate past research by showing that variables included in the NAM are powerful in explaining a diversity of prosocial intentions and behaviours in the social as well as in the environmental context

Teachers' capacity to realize educational change through inquiry-based working and distributed leadership

Teachers face many challenges in their daily teaching practices. On the one hand, they must be able to improve their teaching and learning strategies by navigating changing goals in order to meet the variety in students’ educational needs. On the other hand, governmental and school board projects aimed at educational development focus increasingly on data. These issues require teachers to develop their capacity to realize educational change. Herein, working inquiry-based can be helpful for teachers to investigate their daily practices. In developing and maintaining an inquiry-based working environment, leadership that encourage teachers to take ownership of the change process may be essential. Limited studies focus on how distributed leadership or inquiry-based working may be related to teachers’ capacity to realize educational change, Also, knowledge about whether school leaders’ perceptions of distributed leadership are relevant in enhancing teachers’ capacity to change is scarce. This dissertation examines these issues through four studies. The results show that inquiry-based working illustrates for teachers which educational changes need to be made when adapting teaching strategies. Also, working inquiry-based encourages them to take leadership roles. Their sense of self-efficacy seems to be stronger as well as the extent to which they support one another and share experiences. Although school leaders differ in their interpretations of distributed leadership, distributing leadership may still be worthwhile. Teachers seem to be more likely to collaborate, internalize school goals into personal aims and show a higher level of self-efficacy than in schools without such leadership distribution

The effectiveness of normative messages to decrease meat consumption:The superiority of dynamic normative messages framed as a loss

Consumer behaviors related to food consumption, such as meat consumption, is acknowledged to be a main contributor to the environmental problems. Recent research supports the efficacy of normative messages to change these behaviors for the good. Normative messages make the social norm salient in the behavioral context. Research shows that the normative messages are effective to encourage “desired” pro-environmental behavior if this behavior is carried out by a numerical majority. However, the pro-environmental consumer behaviors are often carried out by a minority of people only. Making salient these behaviors performed by minority of people in normative messages often backfires because the normative message makes salient that it is normal to perform the “undesirable” environmentally harmful behavior. To overcome this shortfall, research has experimented with highlighting that the desired behavior, although still a behavior by minority people, has increased in prevalence (i.e., a dynamic rather than static normative message). However, when such dynamic normative messages are most effective is less clear. Specifically, according to goal-framing theory, it can be assumed that a dynamic normative message highlighting that an increasing minority of people start carrying out the desirable behavior represents a gain frame, while emphasizing that the behavior performed by majority of people is decreasing indicates a loss frame. So far, research on dynamic normative messages only applied gain frames in their messages. This is surprising, as construal level theory (CLT) suggests that the dynamic normative messages will be more effective when framed as a loss. This study therefore tested whether a dynamic normative message is more effective than a static normative message or no message at all, depending on whether it is framed as a loss or a gain. In a one-way between-subject experimental design, including five experimental conditions [i.e., static descriptive normative message (1) gain framed or (2) loss framed; dynamic descriptive normative message (3) gain framed or (4) loss framed; (5) control condition; N = 270], we found that only dynamic normative messages that were framed as a loss were more effective in encouraging a consumer's intention to reduce meat consumption. Therefore, the dynamic normative messages are effective to encourage pro-environmental consumer behaviors of minority of people, but especially when they are framed as a loss rather than a gain.</p

Value orientations and environmental beliefs in five countries - Validity of an instrument to measure egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations

Various scholars argue that egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric value orientations are important for understanding environmental beliefs and behavior. However, little empirical evidence has been provided for the distinction between altruistic and biospheric values. This study examines whether this distinction is valid across different countries (i.e., Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden) by using a new value instrument. Relationships between these value orientations and behavior-specific beliefs (i.e., awareness of environmental consequences and personal norms) are investigated to further examine the validity of the value instrument. Results provide support for the generalization of the three-way distinction. Furthermore, value orientations were related to behavior-specific beliefs in all countries. The authors conclude that the distinction between the three value orientations is valid and useful for examining environmentally relevant behavior.</p

Thou shalt not steal: Effects of normative cues on attitudes towards theft.

In this study, we examine how normative cues influence attitudes towards theft. In a 3 × 2 × 2 within-subjects design (N = 120), we found that people had more negative attitudes towards theft when: 1) a higher value item was stolen than when a lower value item was stolen; 2) the theft took place in a public setting than when it took place in a private setting; and 3) the theft took place in a tidy rather than messy setting. Furthermore, our findings showed interaction effects between the value of a stolen item and 1) the cleanliness of the environment; and 2) the privateness of a setting, on attitudes towards theft. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Persuasive Normative Messages: The Influence of Injunctive and Personal Norms on Using Free Plastic Bags

In this exploratory field-study, we examined how normative messages (i.e., activating an injunctive norm, personal norm, or both) could encourage shoppers to use fewer free plastic bags for their shopping in addition to the supermarket’s standard environmental message aimed at reducing plastic bags. In a one-way subjects-design (N = 200) at a local supermarket, we showed that shoppers used significantly fewer free plastic bags in the injunctive, personal and combined normative message condition than in the condition where only an environmental message was present. The combined normative message did result in the smallest uptake of free plastic bags compared to the injunctive and personal normative-only message, although these differences were not significant. Our findings imply that re-wording the supermarket’s environmental message by including normative information could be a promising way to reduce the use of free plastic bags, which will ultimately benefit the environmen

Listen to others or yourself? The role of personal norms on the effectiveness of social norm interventions to change pro-environmental behavior

Social norm interventions are a cheap and convenient strategy to promote proenvironmental behavior change. However, the effectiveness of using them has been debated. The present study argues that the effectiveness depends on one's own internal moral compass, as presented by personal norms. We examined this main assumption across 3 studies focusing on pro-environmental behavior in a food and diets context. Study 1 shows in a cross-sectional design that people with stronger personal norms are more likely to reduce their meat consumption regardless of their perceptions of the static or dynamic social norms towards meat consumption. Furthermore, quasi-experimental findings show that dynamic (Study 2) and static (Study 3) social normative messages are more effective the weaker one's personal norms towards the pro-environmental behavior. Therefore, when evaluating the effectiveness of social norm interventions people's personal norms should be taken into consideration

The Relationship Between Sociodemographics and Environmental Values Across Seven European Countries

Given the importance of environmental values (altruistic, biospheric, and egoistic) to pro-environmental behavior, it would be useful to segment the population – an approach known as market segmentation – to tailor pro-environmental messages more effectively. Sociodemographic variables are popular targets for segmentation, as such variables are often knowable in the absence of more nuanced information about individuals. However, evidence for the relationship between sociodemographics and environmental values is sparse, and contradictory. We examined the extent to which popular sociodemographic variables (gender, age, income, education, urbanization level, and political orientation) were predictive of environmental values for 11,820 participants across seven European countries. Overall, sociodemographics were hardly related to environmental values. Only gender and political orientation were weakly but significantly related to environmental values, whereby men and right-wingers showed weaker altruistic and biospheric, and stronger egoistic, values than women and left-wingers. We conclude that sociodemographic variables cannot be considered a suitable proxy for environmental values, and thus that behavior-change campaigns might be more impactful when focused on alternative segmentation strategies in relation to environmental aims