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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
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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
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”)
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
Group impact by member • Low: no direct effects on other members (showering) • High: identical effect on all household members (closing curtains living room)
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)
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)
Normative influences To be found in several theories: • Planned Behavior (Ajzen) • Norm-Activation (Schwartz) • Social Identity (Taifel)
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
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
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)
METHOD (2) RELEVANT MEASURES; • Low impact behavior: showering < 5 minutes • High impact behavior: closing curtains in living room during evening while heating is on
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)
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)
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
RESULTS (3) • Social Identity does not moderate Group Norm - Intention relation for any of the behaviors
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