Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Role of Social ...

Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Role of Social Capital

Seong-gin Moon, Ph.D. Associate Professor

Department of Public Administration Inha University

moons@inha.ac.kr &

Ki-Whan Kim, Ph.D. Associate Professor Seoul National University of Science and Technology kiwkim@seoultech.ac.kr

Environmentally significant behavior (ESB) describes individuals' voluntary and proactive efforts to allocate and consume environmental resources in socially sustainable manner. It confronts collective action problems since it incurs personal costs and yet its resulted benefits are shared by everyone and therefore encourages free rides on the efforts of others. This paper empirically examines how social capital can play role into facilitating two primary private-sphere ESBs associated with global climate change: personal environmental constraints and green consumerism. Using the National Survey of Public Environmental Behavior of Koreans, this paper constructs ordinary square regression models to estimate such effects. The empirical results show that social capital and pro-social behavior are the strongest predictors of ESBs. In addition, ESB is strongly influenced by socio-demographic characteristics, including age, gender, and education, and environmental cognition and knowledge.

Introduction

The continual expansion of the economy development has produced explosive population

growth and raised our consumption. In the absence of serious and collective environmental

endeavor, it will end in collision with the limit of the natural system (Brown and Mitchell,

1991; Hart, 1995; Ostrom, 2009). Such conflict is manifested in all forms of environmental

problems, including air/water pollution, aquifer depletion, and climate disruption. These

problems challenge the way humans live and demand their serious actions for lessening

human impacts on the environment and building an environmentally sustainable economy.

To deal with these environmental challenges and furthermore progress toward

sustainability, government has undertaken serious policy measures that can intervene in

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polluting behavior and policy mechanisms that can create incentives for innovative environmental technologies. These government efforts would be important but not sufficient; they would be undermined without individuals' voluntary and cooperative environmental actions. It is essential for individuals to be aware of their own environmental responsibilities and transforming their everyday "private" practices unsustainable to sustainable ones.

Recently, an individual's environmentally significant behavior (ESB)1 has been slowly incorporated into everyday life and gradually transforms the economic system into one more environmentally sustainable (Pfeffer and Stycos, 2002). Individual constraints on consumption and purchase of products with few environmental impacts are good examples. This private action involving change in ordinary practices and lifestyles would produce the important public consequence of the environment on sustainability.

Despite the significant implications of ESB on sustainability, this voluntary contribution never provides the adequate level of what is necessary for meaningful environmental impacts. Insufficient supply of ESB is related to "collective action problems" (Hardin, 1968; Olson, 1971; Ostrom, 1990) or "social dilemma" (Dawes, 1980; Yamagish, 1994). Self-seeking and rational individuals want to merely enjoy the environmental benefits from ESB without contributing their portion for the benefits (Olson, 1971). Such benefits as reduction in CO2 are non-excludable without adversely affecting others' access to them. Therefore, free-ride on the efforts of others is more likely. This opportunistic behavior prohibits realization of collective beneficial choice, in this case, undertaking ESB.

The important question is how we can facilitate ESB? Despite collective action problems, why some individuals undertake such collective behavior? What would be the

1 It is also referred to as pro-environmental behavior, environment friendly behavior, environmentally responsible behavior, ecological behavior, and conservation behavior.

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proper role of government in promoting it? To draw on meaningful environmental impacts, it is important to increase the number of environmentally conscious individuals and achieve the network effects.

This paper pays special attention to the role of "social capital" in promoting two primary areas of ESBs: (1) personal environmental constraints on consumption and (2) personal green consumerism. Social capital is known to be the important antecedent for voluntary and cooperative actions for collectivities (Coleman, 1990; Fukuyama, 1995; Putnam, 1993). Based on the National Survey of Public Environmental Behavior, we construct ordinary square regression models to estimate the impacts of social capital on ESB in South Korea.

This paper contributes to existing literature for several reasons. First, it empirically tests theoretical links between social capital and voluntary behavior by focusing on ESB. We expect that our finding can provide the significant addition to the literature on proenvironmental behavior. In addition, existing studies on this area are predominantly undertaken to examine behavior by westerners, not by Asians. Our study examining Koreans' environmental behavior can provide valuable information to compare and contrast with that of other western people. Finally, literature on this area mainly focuses on psychological factors and demographical characteristics. It lacks paying attention to the social context in which individuals interact and communicate, a social process by which social capital is developed.

ESB: Definition and types ESB involves individuals' voluntary and proactive behavior toward allocating and managing environmental resources in socially sustainable manners. ESB goes beyond extant

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regulatory requirements and can play an important role in promoting environmental sustainability. Recently, ESB gains growing attention from scholars as a feasible and practical complement to dealing with non-traditional environmental issues like global climate change; these issues are characterized by weak regulatory regimes and environmental leaderships, largely due to disagreement over the level and methods of addressing them (Bruner and Klein,??MORE).

ESB is defined by both its impact and intention (Stern, 2000). The former describes the level to which individual environmental behavior is altered to environmental change either directly or indirectly. The direct environmental impacts that individuals make would be introduced by practicing sustainability through their everyday life, including reduction in material consumption and pollution-causing activities. Also, environmental change can be achieved indirectly by shaping the context in which decision are made that affect the environment (Stern, 1997, 2000). Individuals can influence public policies that are directly or indirectly associated with the environment by participation in the political process. For example, policies related to local transport and waste management infrastructure can affect the pattern of behavior such as personal travel and waste disposal (Peattie, 2001). Similarly, market provisioning systems can influence individual's consumption. In addition, ESB is undertaken with the intention to affect the environment. This environmental intent is one that triggers environmental actions. It does not necessarily lead to the actions that result in environmental impacts (Stern, 2000). For example, individuals report their willingness to make "green" purchasing and other related pro-environmental behavior, which often fails to translate into the actual behavior. Discrepancy between environmental intention and behavior is widely discussed in the literature (Jobber, 2000; Stern et al., 2000; for theoretical discussions, see Ajzen, 2005).

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[Table 1 about here] Building upon the definition of ESB, it can be classified into four coherent subtypes by the two-by-two table2. The vertical dimension provides distinction of behavior between inactive that describes environmental intention and active that leads to actions causing environmental impacts. The horizontal dimension focuses on domains where individual environmental behavior occurs, ranging from private to public. First, private-sphere behavior involves actions causing environmental impacts directly by shifting in personal lifestyle that practices "voluntary simplicity," either dramatically or incrementally. It entails personal curtailment of consumption (e.g., water, meat) and the use/purchase of environmentally friendly products (Olsen, 1981, Stern, 2000). Second, public-sphere behavior involves actions causing environmental impacts indirectly through public domain, participating in public policy-making processes via various means, including environmental protest, environmental petition, and donation to environmental organizations (Stern, 2000).To put both dimensions together, we categorized four types of ESB, including non-active private sphere, non-active public sphere, active private-sphere, and active public-sphere. This paper pays special attention to active private-sphere ESBs, including personal constraints on consumption and green consumerism. Recently, they are obtaining much attention from both policy-makers and scholars as important areas for environmental sustainability. Without drawing on individuals' voluntary efforts to change their unsustainable level of consumption, any initiatives involving policies and technology will be in vain. [some statistics about Korean ESB]

ESB and Collective Action Problems

2It is constructed based on the typology suggested by Stern (2000). 5

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