About This Project
We are studying the psychological link between personal values, quality of life and pro-environmental behavior, to help inform how sustainability can be achieved. Our project adresses the question of whether adapting a more sustainable lifestyle entails sacrifices in well-being, or if it actually could enhance personal well-being. Through a large experimental study, we will examine how promoting intrinsic values affects both personal well-being and pro-environmental behavior.
Ask the Scientists
Join The DiscussionWhat is the context of this research?
Our study will look into the relationship between intrinsic values, life quality and pro-environmental behavior.
Intrinsic values, such as community feeling, affiliation and self-acceptance, are associated with greater life quality than extrinsic values, such as popularity, image and financial success. Some research indicate that intrinsic values also can be associated with more pro-environmental behavior. Other studies have pointed towards the possibility of activating these intrinsic values - meaning that people can be induced to be more or less intrinsically oriented.
Does this mean that activation of intrinsic values can make people both happier and more pro-environmental? So far, no studies have asked this exact question.
What is the significance of this project?
Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge our species is facing in coming decades, tightly followed by the overexploitation of fresh water and a great variety of natural resources.
Limiting environmental impact to ensure sustainability is commonly framed as requiring sacrifices in the form of reduced human well-being. This point of view largely equals human well-being with a high level of material consumption.
Findings in accordance with our hypotheses would support a very different view, namely that promoting values that favour lower levels of consumption leads to greater, not lower, well-being. Rather than viewing all strategies that limit consumption as trade-offs between sustainability and well-being, this will allow for some such strategies to be seen as win-win.
What are the goals of the project?
- The study will be conducted as a lab, where participants (unknowingly) are divided into experimental and control groups and then given different tasks to complete.
- All participants will fill in a previously validated scale of personal values. The experimental group will additionally be given tasks that involve learning about and reflecting on intrinsic values. The control group will work on a similar concept with no relation to life quality or pro-environmental behavior. Lastly, they will fill in a questionnaire meant to tap life quality.
- Participants will then be placed in a situation with no apparent connection to the experiment, where they will have to choose between a pro-environmental and a more convenient act.
- Funders and interested participants will be informed about our results.
Budget
The link between well-being and pro-environmental behavior is of great relevance today, but not much explored. As senior students we find ourselves in the position to conduct such exploration. Our university, however, cannot fund this study, which makes crowdfunding essential to get the experiment off the ground.
As in most psychological research, the most costly part of this study is the payment of participants. We would like to recruit at least 100 participants to ensure statistical power. From comparing with similar studies carried out at our university, we find a payment of about 20 dollars per person to be appropriate.
Meet the Team
Team Bio
Ane and Bendik are psychology students in their final year. They have been through five years of extensive training in psychological theory, as well as scientific and clinical methods. In less than a year, both will be psychologists.
Ane is particularly interested in the somewhat irrational workings of the normal human mind, and how people and environment affect one another. This semester, she is engaged as an intern in a firm combining architecture and psychology, and she's working on how companies can be nudged to be greener. Bendik is currently engaged as a clinical psychology intern in South Africa, and is particularly interested in ways that values apply to mental health and well-being.
In her spare time, Ane practices karate, goes skiing and tries to write stories. Bendik enjoys hiking in the mountains, and has a history as a professional dancer before he started to study psychology.
Additional Information
If you're interested in more background material, here are three studies that gives good insight into the areas we will explore in our study.
- Bardi, A., & Schwartz, S. H. (2003). Values and behavior: Strength and structure of relations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(10), 1207-1220. doi: 10.1177/0146167203254602
- Brown, K. W., & Kasser, T. (2005). Are psychological and ecological well-being compatible? The role of values, mindfulness, and lifestyle. Social Indicators Research, 74(2), 349-368. doi: 10.1007/s11205-004-8207-8
- Lekes, N., Hope, N. H., Gouveia, L., Koestner, R., & Philippe, F. L. (2012). Influencing value priorities and increasing well-being: The effects of reflecting on intrinsic values. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 7(3), 249-261. doi: 10.1080/17439760.2012.677468
Project Backers
- 4Backers
- 8%Funded
- $154Total Donations
- $38.50Average Donation