Sustainability and Pro-Environmental Behaviors: The Perspective of Environmental Psychology

The environmental issue represents one of the challenges of the 21st century and is understood as the study of issues arising from anthropogenic impacts on ecological balances (chemical, physical, and biological) that can pose a threat to biodiversity in the biosphere as a result of water, soil, and subsoil pollution and the exploitation of natural resources. This challenge, gathering multidisciplinary interest in various scientific fields, is requiring constant reflection in national and supranational legislation and global sustainable development policies to adopt measures aimed at safeguarding the environment and combating climate change.

These reflections were rooted in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration (the first declaration of

common perspectives for the conservation of the ’“Human Environment”), the 1987 Brundtland Report (Our Common Future, published in the World Commission on Environment and Development, in which the topic of Sustainable Development was introduced and defined for the first time), at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro conference (a key turning point in which the guidelines for action of over 172 member states are enshrined), at the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 (one of the most important international legal instruments aimed at combating climate change), and at subsequent global summits, such as the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012, COP 21 and the related Paris Agreements in 2015 and the subsequent COP 26 in Glasgow in 2021.

To date, these agreements, although not having achieved satisfactory results in the opinion of many experts, have contributed to an awareness of the problem and to determining the awareness that the transition from an economic model based on the exploitation and waste of resources to a sustainable development model that reduces the environmental impact of human activities is not only a moral duty, but a vital necessity (Castellani, 2015).

From an economic science and behavioral science perspective, the environment is thought of as the result of a global choice architecture system (of incentives and feedback), in which decisions are made by actors of all kinds, from consumers to large corporations (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).

The interest of Environmental Psychology in these issues coincides with the second period of rise of the discipline, when starting from the years ’60 a first awareness of environmental problems began to manifest itself, giving rise to the first studies by De Groot (1967), Lindvall (1970), Appleyard and Craik (1974), Craik and Zube (1976) on explaining the negative influences of human activity on the biophysical environment and human health, with particular reference to the impacts of urban noise and air pollution on environmental quality (Steg et al., 2008).

Since the ’70s and the following ’80s, studies have expanded to include issues of energy access and perceptions and assessments of the risk associated with the development of new technologies (Steg et al., 2008), up to the gradual evolution of Environmental Psychology into Sustainability Psychology, as suggested by Gifford in 2007, following the awareness of the effects of pollution, of deforestation and climate change on ecosystems.

Over the course of the 21st century, evidence has been consolidated, which generally recognizes that human behavior is one of the main causal factors of these environmental issues and that climate change is largely anthropogenic (National Research Council, 2010; Swim et al., 2011).

One of the constant and growing concerns of Environmental Psychology (and Sustainability Psychology) has become to identify theoretical models and tools to change people's behavior in order to solve environmental problems, while preserving human well-being and quality of life (Steg et al., 2008).

In this context, organizational and individual behavior within companies is a crucial factor in environmental and sustainability issues, especially in light of the aforementioned national and supranational regulatory impulses and the increasingly widespread social expectations of large companies to proactively acknowledge the specific social and environmental responsibilities associated with their growth.

Business and industry organizations are seen as primarily responsible for injecting greenhouse gases into the environment and, thus, climate change (Trudeau & Canada West Foundation, 2007).

Companies are therefore now encouraged to identify green-oriented strategies and actions from a smart industry perspective in favor of environmental sustainability and have long since begun to adopt formal or informal environmental management systems integrated into their business processes (Darnall, Henriques, Sadorsky, 2008).

Starting from the constructs relating to the cognitive representation of individuals of the person-nature relationship (Zweers, 2000) varying from an anthropocentric vision (above nature) to an ecocentric vision (subordinate to nature), companies are called upon to find a management balance with respect to four organizational approaches in running a business (anthropocentric type “master”, biocentric, eco-centric, conservationist) in which the ’“responsible company” is called upon to concretely contribute to the conservation of energy and the adoption of projects that promote the reduction of the environmental impact of its products and services (Castellani, 2015).

From this perspective, human capital (understood as the set of both managerial and operational figures operating within an industrial organization) plays a crucial role in promoting a pro-environmental and pro-sustainability organizational culture implemented in the work context through behaviors relevant to the intrinsic characteristics of one's job, to the consequent decision-making in the course of its activities and to control the environmental risk associated with the organization itself and the relationship with the territory in which it is established.

Pro-environmental behaviors therefore have a direct relationship between human activities and the impact on the environment that results from them and have a direct and tangible implication on some of the most important challenges that humanity is called upon to face during the 21st century, not only to ensure its balanced development, but especially to enable its very survival.

Studies on pro-environmental behaviors have explored areas related to the private, social and educational spheres (Stern, 1999, 2000 and Clayton & Myers, 2010) and only recently has research also investigated the implementation of pro-environmental behaviors in the workplace (Paillé & Boiral, 2013; Ones & Dilchert, 2012b). The importance of the latter lies in the fact that companies are now encouraged to identify green-oriented strategies and solutions from an industrial perspective in favor of environmental sustainability.

It is therefore necessary to distinguish between pro-environmental behaviors attributable to citizens' public and private conduct, compared to pro-environmental behaviors applied in work contexts, to the point of even going so far as to behaviors intrinsically linked to one's work duties.

The following paragraphs will explore these aspects in depth, starting from pro-environmental behaviors in general, the related theoretical models, and the perception of environmental risk, up to and including these behaviors in the workplace and industry.