Bringing Identity Theory into Environmental Sociology

Abstract

In an effort to explain pro-environmental behavior, environmental sociologists often study environmental attitudes. While much of this work is atheoretical, the focus on attitudes suggests that researchers are implicitly drawing upon attitude theory in psychology. The present research brings sociological theory to environmental sociology by drawing on identity theory to understand environmentally responsive behavior. We develop an environment identity model of environmental behavior that includes not only the meanings of the environment identity, but also the prominence and salience of the environment identity and commitment to the environment identity. We examine the identity process as it relates to behavior, though not to the exclusion of examining the effects of environmental attitudes. The findings reveal that individual agency is important in influencing environmentally responsive behavior, but this agency is largely through identity processes, rather than attitude processes. This provides an important theoretical and empirical advance over earlier work in environmental sociology.

An Identity-Based Approach to Social Enterprise

“…Examples of the former include benevolence, caring, environmental protection, and social justice; conversely, identities related to power, wealth, and hedonism align with the commercial logic (Hitlin, 2003;Stets & Biga, 2003;Stets & Carter, 2012). Building on these observations, we argue that role and personal identities may provide a pathway through which commercial and/or social welfare logics are infused into the venture creation process, and are thus relevant to understanding the emergence of social enterprises.…”

“…It is important to note, though, that in the absence of a specific aligned role, the behavioral expectations of a personal identity are quite broad and are enacted within varied social relationships. As such, knowledge, competencies and social relations are more diffuse for personal than for role identities, which have specific behavioral expectations and are enacted in focused sets of social relations (Stets & Biga, 2003).…”

“…Illustrating this, Weber and colleagues (2008: 534) found that entrepreneurs came to recognize opportunities in grass-fed ranching because they viewed "production as a commercial and moral enterprise congruent with personal… identities." Choi and Gray (2008) also showed that many entrepreneurs evaluated potential opportunities in relation to their personal environmentalist identity (Stets & Biga, 2003).…”

Sustainable consumption and marketing

“…In the context of environmental behaviour and organic consumption this contribution has been confirmed using an individual self-concept that is variously labelled green identity (Whitmarsh & O'Neill, 2010), environmental identity (Clayton & Opotow, 2003;Stets & Biga, 2003) or ethical identity (Michaelidou & Hassan, 2008;Shaw & Shiu, 2003).…”

“…First of all potential components of sustainable identity are investigated. Key components of sustainable identity are supposedly feeling connected to the natural environment and a commitment to ethics and justice (Clayton, 2003;Mayer & Frantz, 2004;Ozcaglar-Toulouse et al, 2006;Shaw & Shiu, 2003;Stets & Biga, 2003;Whitmarsh & O'Neill, 2010). Values are sometimes considered part of identity as well (Hitlin, 2003), though more often they are considered a closely related but separate construct (Stets & Biga, 2003;Stryker, 2007;Whitmarsh & O'Neill, 2010).…”