“To support or not to support, that is the question”. Testing the VBN theory in predicting support for car use reduction policies in Russia

Abstract

High use of motorized vehicles is a major cause of CO 2 emissions, affecting the quality of the environment negatively. Employing policies that aim to reduce car use would be key to decrease transport-related emissions. However, such policies need to be accepted by the public to be successful. In the current paper, we examine whether support for car use reduction policies can be predicted by the Value-Belief-Norm theory (VBN;Stern, 2000), reflecting a process of value triggered norm-activation about reducing one's car use. Notably, we tested the VBN theory in Russia, which is a postsocialist country with a high car use and high transport-related CO 2 emissions. As expected, findings indicate that high endorsement of biospheric values is associated with high environmental concern, which is related to an increased awareness of environmental consequences of car use, and a high ascription of responsibility of one's own contribution to environmental problems related to car use. This process leads to strengthening personal norms to reduce own car use, which were associated with higher acceptability of car use reduction policies. The findings indicate that policies that aim at increased support for car use reduction in Russia could target biospheric values and activate personal norms.

Sustainability in Youth: Environmental Considerations in Adolescence and Their Relationship to Pro-environmental Behavior

“…Particularly people's strong biospheric values have been found to be important to explain multiple pro-environmental behaviors (de Groot and Steg, 2007a,b;Steg et al, 2012Steg et al, , 2014Merrill et al, 2018). Studies found positive relationships between biospheric values and recycling and environmental activism (Balundë et al, 2019), energy conservation (de Groot et al, 2012;Sahin, 2013) and acceptability of policies to reduce car use (Hiratsuka et al, 2018;Ünal et al, 2019).…”

The Relationship Between People’s Environmental Considerations and Pro-environmental Behavior in Lithuania

“…For example, in Latin America, notably Argentina, biospheric values were related to household energy savings (Jakovcevic and Reyna, 2016), and intention to reduce passenger car use and acceptability of passenger car taxation policies (Jakovcevic and Steg, 2013). In addition, biospheric values were related to energy conservation behavior in Hungary (De Groot et al, 2012) and Turkey (Sahin, 2013), and acceptability of car use reduction policies in Japan and Russia (Hiratsuka et al, 2018; Ünal et al, 2019). These studies however did not include environmental self-identity.…”

Determinants of Public Acceptance for Traffic-Reducing Policies to Improve Urban Air Quality

“…In a later study, the same connection between problem awareness and acceptability was identified, concluding that increasing problem awareness may increase acceptability of various traffic measures [21]. A more recent study found not only that problem awareness was related to a stronger sense of responsibility to reduce harmful actions, and hence a greater acceptability of traffic-reducing measures, but that environmental concern was the strongest predictor of problem awareness [28]. Here, too, the VBN theory plays an important role, with different values influencing an individual's perception of environmental problems.…”

“…(1) Personal norm, often underlined by environmental beliefs or biospheric values, appears to be one common predictor of acceptability of car use reduction policies, particularly following the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory [27]. A person's moral obligation, and hence their willingness, to reduce their car use seems to be driven by an awareness that their actions cause harm to the environment [10,12,20,28].…”

“…People with egoistic value orientations will assess their environmentally-oriented behaviors based on perceived costs and benefits to them personally, whereas those with biospheric value orientations will consider the costs and benefits to the biosphere as a whole [34]. As such, endorsement of egoistic values has been found to reduce acceptability of traffic-reducing measures, whereas biospheric values tend to increase it [28,35].…”