Featured Topic: Green Behavior

Proenvironmentalor green—behavior has been defined by Steg and Vlek (2009) as “behavior that harms the environment as little as possible, or even benefits the environment” (p. 309)†. This type of behavior spans the full range of activities in our daily lives, from home to work and the commute in between, and from personal leisure activities to organizations’ corporate practices. The pervasiveness of the proenvironmental lifestyle movement across all aspects of life led us to select green behavior as our third featured topic. At home and when commuting, we are encouraged to consider the environmental impacts of our actions, including buying organic foods and using electric cars. As SBP authors Suh, Eves, and Lumbers (2015) and Chen, Liang, and Wang (2016) found, most people seem to hold positive views of proenvironmental behavior but, in practice, many factors affect the degree to which they actually engage in this. Among these, price seems to be a consistent point that prevents good intentions from being put into practice, in that many consumers perceive green options as being more expensive than less eco-friendly products. Don’t hesitate to look through our archives if you’re interested to find out about the other influencing factors!


In an organizational context, green behavior can be considered as an aspect of corporate social responsibility that is shared throughout the organization, with management staff expected to develop and implement eco-friendly policies and employees expected to conform to these. Company size can be an important consideration in the extent to which green corporate practices receive attention, with larger companies potentially having more scope to adopt these than small- and medium-sized enterprises do (Lin & Ho, 2010). Despite this, there are still options that are available to businesses of all sizes, even if it’s something as simple as reducing paper use (Zhou, Ye, Geng, & Xu, 2015).For the most up-to-date research available on green behavior in all aspects of life, browse through the below selection of articles we’ve published on this topic in 2016. Additional papers can be located using the “search” function on our website.


† Steg, L., & Vlek, C. (2009). Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: An integrative review and research agenda. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 309–317. http://doi.org/b2kt3c 

Is green product purchasing an innovative or conspicuous behavior?Kyutae Park and Kyootai Lee, 2016, 44(1), 29–44.


Closing the green gap: The impact of environmental commitment and advertising believabilityYeonshin Kim, Sangdo Oh, Sukki Yoon, and Hwashin Hyun Shin, 2016, 44(2), 339–352.


Psychological divergence between urban and suburban Chinese in relation to green commutingKai Chen, Haokai Liang, and Xiaofan Wang, 2016, 44(3), 481–498.


Purchase intention for electric vehicles in China from a customer-value perspectiveShengjun Jiang, 2016, 44(4), 641–656.