The role of types of motivation, life goals, and beliefs in pro-environmental behavior: The Self-Determination Theory perspective

Degradation of the environment is a serious global problem and its solution depends mostly on the people's willingness to change their destructive actions towards nature. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective methods that would help reinforce the pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). In order to achieve that one should firstly provide a detailed explanation regarding the psychological determinants of such destructive behaviors. The main goal of this study was to investigate if and what connection exists between types of regulations (amotivation, extrinsic motivation, introjection, identification, integration, intrinsic motivation), the life goals (intrinsic and extrinsic) with the accordance to the Self-Determined Theory and the personal beliefs about the importance of the changes in the natural environment, and the frequency of pro-environmental behaviors. We conducted a questionnaire survey and target group consisted of adolescents and emerging adults from Poland (N = 261), 15-30 years old. Correlation and regression analysis were used to verify the hypotheses. Structural equation modeling was also carried out. The obtained results show that introjection, identification, and integration, intrinsic and extrinsic life goals, as well as the belief about the importance of the changes in the environment can be used to significantly explain 45% of the variability of pro-environmental behavior. Said results have both theoretical and practical implications.