1 / 18

Henk Staats, Mieneke Weenig, Marije van den Bogerd Leiden University

Henk Staats, Mieneke Weenig, Marije van den Bogerd Leiden University. Family dynamics: Norm congruence, social identity, and group dependence on performing proenvironmental behavior in the home. Origin of the idea. Many environmentally relevant behaviors take place in and around the home

inara
Download Presentation

Henk Staats, Mieneke Weenig, Marije van den Bogerd Leiden University

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Henk Staats, Mieneke Weenig, Marije van den BogerdLeiden University Family dynamics:Norm congruence, social identity, and group dependence on performing proenvironmental behavior in the home

  2. Origin of the idea • Many environmentally relevant behaviors take place in and around the home • Environmental effects of household behavior are assessed at the household level • Household members can exert strong normative control on each other (presence, visibility, “closeness”)

  3. Behaviors in households • Performance can be expected to be influenced by other household members • Come in many different types: dimension to be explored here is the characteristic of group impact by individual member

  4. Group impact by member • Low: no direct effects on other members (showering) • High: identical effect on all household members (closing curtains living room)

  5. Characteristics of low- and high-impact behaviors (1) • Low: - Little individual control over environmental effect of household (e.g. total water use by showering) • No salient group norm: high intra-group variability • Low complementarity (independent individual contribution)

  6. Characteristics of low- and high-impact behaviors (2) • High - Strong individual control over effect • Salient group norm (e.g. agree to close curtains in living room - High complementarity (only one member can execute the behavior)

  7. Normative influences To be found in several theories: • Planned Behavior (Ajzen) • Norm-Activation (Schwartz) • Social Identity (Taifel)

  8. Relevant predictions of each of the theories • TPB: subjective norm predicts behavioral intention • NAT: personal norm mediates relation between subjective norm and behavioral intention • SIT: Social identity moderates relation between group norm and behavioral intention

  9. What about our two types of behavior? Specific predictions • Group norms may be more influential for high- than for low-impact behaviors • The strength of the group norm-intention relation may be moderated by degree of identification with family • Personal norm will mediate group norm-intention relation • Mediation by personal norm may be stronger for low-impact behavior

  10. METHOD (1) • Participants: N=180 in multiple person households. Mean age 46 years, 50% female • Datacollection: Mail survey among members of sports clubs (pre-treatment survey of field experiment)

  11. METHOD (2) RELEVANT MEASURES; • Low impact behavior: showering < 5 minutes • High impact behavior: closing curtains in living room during evening while heating is on

  12. METHOD (3) Relevant measures for each behavior • Intention (cf Ajzen 2002; 2-item measure, alpha = .86/.88) • Subjective norm (cf. Ajzen & Foshbein, 1980; 1 item) • Group norm (cf. Terry, Hoog, & White, 2000; 2-item measure, alpha=.54/.75) • Personal norm (Staats, Harland, Wilke, 2004; 3-item measure, alpha = 79/.87): • Social Identity (cf. Luthanen & Crocker, 1992; 2-item measure, alpha=.78) • Checks of difference in type of behavior (personal efficay and influence on group efficacy; 1 item each)

  13. RESULTS (1) Checks • Efficacy self: (1=not at all, 5=very much) • Mshower = 3.4 • Mcurtains = 4.1 (p < .001) • Influence on efficacy household: (1=not at all, 5=very much) • Mshower = 3.1 • Mcurtains = 4.2 (p < .001)

  14. RESULTS (2) • Group norm as good a predictor of intention as subjective norm • Snshower - intention = .57 • GNshower - intention = .48 • RSN-GN = .67 • SNcurtains - intention = .49 • GNcurtains - Intention = .58 • RSN-GN = .56

  15. RESULTS (3) • Social Identity does not moderate Group Norm - Intention relation for any of the behaviors

  16. RESULTS (4): showering < 5 minutes

  17. RESULTS (5):closing curtains

  18. CONCLUSIONS • More attention for norms is warranted • Modelling/imitation may be a strong determinant of behavior • Group - personal norm relations may differ per behavior in a predictable way • Group processes in the home warrant further research by environmental psychologists

More Related