ABSTRACT
A crucial issue for environmental communication research is the question how attitudes, intentions, and behaviors relating to the environment can be changed by communication, either through regular news reporting, social media, strategic communication or even fictional formats. This chapter provides an overview of the most common psychological models that have been applied to environmental behavior and reviews existing empirical research. Based on such differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultures, M. Mancha and C. Y. Yoder developed an environmental theory of planned behavior that adopts the Theory of Planned Behavior for environmental behavior and integrates a person’s self-identity as a predictor for attitudes, norms and control beliefs. The Norm Activation Model (NAM) aimed to explain voluntarism and self-sacrificing helping behavior in low-emergency situations, such as volunteering to invest time in a conflict. Similarly to the NAM, the Value-Belief-Norm assumes that environmental behavior is motivated by a personal norm, which is again defined as a feeling of moral obligation to act.
