Framing Pro-Environmental Messages: Using Widely Shared Values to Create Broad-Based Support

Abstract

This paper proposes an environmental planning and management technique that reduces opposition to and increases agreement with pro-environmental messages in the United States that has been tested empirically. Widely held foundational American values of significance to pro-environmental beliefs and actions that have been identified and tested for significance through decades of empirical psychological research are discussed. Material is presented on ways planners can use combined values to frame pro-environmental measures that increase agreement and appeal to a broad cross-section of citizens and stakeholders who may hold differing political opinions and worldviews.

Introduction

Most North American planners and managers who have organized and led public meetings on potentially contentious environmental issues such as climate change, sustainability, land/forest/watershed management, resource conservation, ecological planning, sprawl, low impact development, or growth constraints/boundaries have run into disagreement and opposition from various quarters (Illsleya and Richardson 2004). Although many times that controversy stems from issue context, it also can result from pre-existing belief systems, such as political or ideological orientation, held by citizens and stakeholders (Bain et al. 2012; Feygina, Jost, and Goldsmith 2010; Gromet, Kunreuther, and Larrick 2013; Haidt and Graham 2007; Kahan 2013).

The use of various techniques to resolve public opposition to or disputes over environmental issues and reduce the possibility of struggle or adjudication has been studied in several disciplines, including psychology, political science, economics, sociology, planning, and law (Susskind, van der Wansem, and Ciccarelli. 2000). However, despite the increasing use of consensus building and alternative dispute resolution techniques (Innes and Booher 2004), the situation has not improved significantly since Susskind and Weinstein (1980, 312) noted: “Disputes among groups with conflicting values are epidemic.”

In the face of the seemingly intractable nature of conflict, the question must be asked as to whether a technique to maximize agreement and minimize opposition to pro-environmental measures is available that has been tested empirically. In the planning literature, Brody (2003a) observed the necessity of motivating communities to protect ecosystem resources before they are lost or critically damaged but did not identify measures to unify opponents that have been subject to empirical testing. A number of planners interested in achieving broad-based support for pro-environmental measures and have emphasized the importance of appealing to shared environmental values (Kahn and Morris 2009; Lewis and Baldassare 2010). However, to date no North American planning studies have grounded those suggestions in empirical research that demonstrates the applicability of a universal system of structured, shared values to pro-environmental measures. This paper addresses that problem by focusing on the results of empirical research in social psychology that demonstrates the efficacy of framing pro-environmental messages to appeal to widely shared, foundational values, which are defined formally as generalized internal criteria or standards that transcend specific situations for “guiding action [and] for developing and maintaining attitudes toward relevant objects and situations” (Rokeach 1968, 160) and informally as enduring standards or life goals that guide and motivate human behavior.

The following elements characterize the paper’s organizational structure. Problem-solving and compromise-oriented strategies planners use to address public policy decision-making and controversy are evaluated. Widely shared American values and moral dimensions of direct significance to pro-environmental policies and actions identified in empirical behavioral research are discussed. Pertinent empirical literature is examined for evidence that identifies the roles widely shared values/morals play in framing pro-environmental measures and for research that addresses the close relationship of values to value-based environmental concerns. A demonstration is provided showing that pro-environmental frames can be organized around a single value/moral domain or multiple values and value-based environmental concerns. A discussion is then presented on how environmental planners can use information on widely shared values/moral domains combined with value-based environmental concerns to frame pro-environmental measures that maximize agreement and minimize disagreement over conflicting political or ideological positions while appealing to a broad cross-section of conservatives, moderates, and liberals.

Various techniques and models have been proposed to explain why people engage in behavior that demonstrates levels of environmental awareness and action (Corbett 2006). Those research frameworks include the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen & Fishbein 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen 1975), model of responsible behavior (Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera 1986-1987), model of human values (Schwartz 1994a), deliberative and inclusionary processes (O’Riordan 2005), reasonable person model (Kaplan 2000), community-based social marketing (McKenzie-Mohr 2000a, 2000b), social-ecological framework (Kurz 2002), and others. Kurz not only presented ideas concerning the application of a social-ecological framework to studying pro-environmental behavior[1] (PEB) but also reviewed and discussed the limitations of several common approaches to such research. For another, differently focused review of selected frameworks for analyzing PEB, see Kollmuss and Agyeman (2002), who also proposed a model that categorized a number of conflicting and competing factors that shape environmental decisions. A vigorous and thought-provoking critique of attitude-behavior-context models as applied to pro-environmental actions and their effects on governance is provided by Shove (2010), who criticizes what she characterizes as the limited vocabulary of the model that “constrains and prevents policy imagination of the kind required” (2010, 1282) to address society's relationship to climate change.

Many variables affect or influence environmental behavior, including childhood experiences in nature, images of environmental destruction, threat of natural disaster, emotions-affect such as biophilia and topophilia, values, attitudes, environmental awareness, sense of responsibility, injunctive and personal norms, etc. Values were chosen as the key focus of this paper in terms of framing pro-environmental measures for several reasons. First, values are important to environmental research because their effects are empirically measurable (de Groot and Steg 2009; Karp 1996). Second, numerous empirical studies in psychology and sociology since the 1960s have identified widely shared values as criteria involved in guiding the decisions and actions that constitute human behavior and in developing attitudes toward environmental objects and issues (Hitlin and Piliavin 2004; Rokeach 1973; Schwartz 1994a). Third, numerous social psychological studies have determined that changing the personal values of individuals is difficult since they are relatively stable and persist over time (Rokeach and Ball-Rokeach 1989; Schwartz 1992). And fourth, as a result of independent, empirical analyses, psychologists have argued that values are an integral part of the framework that connects values, beliefs, and norms to PEB and are more powerful in explaining personal norms and intentions than worldviews (Steg et al. 2011; Stern and Dietz 1994).

Values are significant for their longevity, stability, and influence with respect to guiding environmental attitudes and behavior (Stern 2000). Therefore, if planners/managers can better understand the roles widely shared values and value-based environmental concerns play in stimulating behavior, they may be more capable of using those core beliefs to frame pro-environmental measures that appeal to those who hold differing political opinions and worldviews. Although little environmental planning/management research has been conducted into core values, an important exception to that generalization can be found in the work of various U.S. Forest Service scientists regarding what is known as values suitability analysis (as reported in Brown and Reed 2000; Reed and Brown 2003). That research was an effort to understand “the relationships between preferences and attitudes toward forest management activities and forest values” (Brown and Reed 2000, 240). However, no attempt was made to place “forest values” within an overarching theoretical system that identified the universal content and structure of human values and differentiated among various types of widely shared values and their effects on environmental behavior.

It is critical to emphasize that the widely shared values with which this paper is concerned are the foundational beliefs that underlie the very motivations for human behavior. Those values, as well as closely related value-based environmental concerns, are not to be confused or conflated with issue-based environmental concerns, principles, standards, or ethics such as cherishing clean air and water, choosing green travel alternatives, supporting the restoration of urban forests, or promoting ecologically sustainable development and biodiversity (Gregory, McDaniels, and Fields 2001; Kahn and Morris 2009; Merrick and Garcia 2004; Norton and Steinemann 2001). This paper focuses on the core values and the related concerns that are responsible for motivating people to treasure free-flowing streams, protect native flora and fauna, reduce their carbon footprints, and plan more environmentally responsible cities (Dietz, Fitzgerald, and Shwom 2005).

Techniques to Resolve Controversy over Environmental Measures

The problem-solving and compromise-oriented techniques planners use today to balance sensitive land-based issues with politics at varying levels of governance have been influenced by behavioral research in the fields of organizational psychology (Lewicki, Weiss, and Lewin 1992) and negotiation/dispute resolution (Hensler 2003; Susskind 2009). Those engagement/dispute resolution techniques include negotiation and mediation (Susskind, van der Wansem, and Ciccarelli 2000), framing-reframing-reconceptualizing issues (Asah et al. 2012; Kaufman and Gray 2003; Shmueli 2008), and resolving intractable conflicts (Burgess and Burgess 2006; Campbell 2003; Lewicki, Gray, and Elliott 2003). Other similar and at least partially related techniques for reducing or circumventing land use/environmental conflicts include consensus building (Innes 1996; Innes and Booher 2004), joint fact-finding (Karl, Susskind, and Wallace 2007), cooperative discourse (Renn 1999), science impact coordination (Susskind and Karl 2009), and a method known variously as communicative planning, collaborative planning, shared decision making, or deliberative planning. That last technique, however labeled, has numerous supporters (Forester 1999; Frame, Gunton, and Day 2004; Healey 1996, 2003; Innes 1995) as well as critics (Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones 2002).

Gregory, McDaniels, and colleagues (Arvai, Gregory, and McDaniels 2001; Gregory 2000; McDaniels and Gregory 2004) have articulated an approach to environmental decision-making in a public policy context as an alternative to alternative dispute resolution and consensus building that they contend “pose impediments to the creation of insights for decision-makers and lead to the adoption of inferior policy choices” (Gregory, McDaniels, and Fields 2001, 415). Their model uses a structured approach of learning through adaptive management that was modified from behavioral decision research and decision analysis combined with value-focused thinking. According to the authors, that approach leads to improved insight as well as more thoughtful, better informed, and higher quality decisions by focusing simultaneously on deliberation and analysis.

However, one major difficulty with the Habermasian and Giddensian approaches that are inherent in consensus building, collaborative planning, and the structured learning approach is not one of theory but human nature. Since the Habermasian and Giddensian approaches to those and similar strategies are grounded in rationality (Booher and Innes 2002), they are vulnerable to criticism that a great many human actions are less characterized by rational behavior than they are by uncertainty and non-rational[2] behavior (Jensen 1994; Turner 1991). As Schon and Rein (1995) point out, appeals to rationality can be ineffective in conflict situations since both sides frequently use the very same fact-based evidence to support opposing contentions. Thus, theories or models based on normative rationality can be criticized for failing to account for observed behavior. Such criticism includes cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957), framing effects (Tversky and Kahneman 1981), system justification (Feygina, Jost, and Goldsmith 2010), biased assimilation/attitude polarization (Boysen and Vogel 2007), identity-protective cognition (Kahan et al. 2012), ideologically motivated cognition (Kahan 2013), confirmation bias (Taber and Lodge 2006), belief congruence (Struch and Schwartz 1989), intuition (Dane and Pratt 2007), social identity/party identification (Achen 2002), and party polarization (McCright and Dunlap 2011) among numerous others. Many if not the greater majority of psychologists believe that behaving non-rationally or inconsistently is a universal human trait (Jensen 1994). Thus, techniques based on rational models of behavior have been regarded by many as limited in application.

The conflict-reducing and decision-making techniques listed above have similar constraints in terms of applicability for local jurisdictions as they are time consuming, expensive, require highly trained individuals with special skills, and would likely entail the involvement of outsiders—mediators, arbiters, negotiators, attorneys, and other specialists—in the decision-making process, a condition many jurisdictions regard unfavorably (Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000). And, as Innes (2004, 5) pointed out, some of those techniques are “only appropriate in situations of uncertainty and controversy where all stakeholders have incentives to come to the table and mutual reciprocity in their interests.” Kolb and Rubin (1991), Pruitt (1995), and Pruitt et al. (1993) also determined that when the central part of a conflict involved moral or ethical dimensions, and by extension values, agreements become difficult to achieve.

Since opposing political/ideological views are typically grounded in strongly held principles, using negotiation and dispute resolution techniques in environmental disagreements driven by moral/value differences between conservatives and liberals is problematic. Although many individuals may be willing to compromise on disputed planning or policy-related issues, few would do so regarding deeply held moral/ethical standards or values. Another critical factor is that although dispute reduction-resolution and framing/reframing techniques have proved beneficial in many diverse planning and policy-related situations, typically they are initiated well after controversy has occurred and are not concerned with maximizing agreement or minimizing opposition in the initial stages of message framing, which is one of the primary interests of this paper.

Framing of Environmental Issues in Planning Literature

A number of planning-related papers that feature framing or reframing environmental issues or values are identified in this section. The intent is to provide a snapshot of the type of work on framing environmental issues in planning, not a formal literature review. Academic papers that address the framing of those issues in other disciplines, such as sociology or political science, are ignored unless their focus is planning-related. A number of planners have used the concept of framing to indicate a frame of reference, policy orientation, or varying concepts of space and place (Cantrill and Senecah 2001; Faludi 2000; Healey 2004); those works are not included in this discussion.

As a topic in urban-environmental planning research, framing has received only modest attention. One of the first planners to recognize the power of geospatial images to frame verbal statements of policy was Faludi (1996). That discussion was continued by Ole Jensen and Richardson (2003) in an effort to broaden the vocabulary of analysis from merely relying on narrative to include such graphic representations as maps, images, and spatial metaphors that can be used to frame geospatial identity, particularly in political struggles over policy formation.

Malczewski et al. (1997) developed a consensus-building model for framing group decision making that was applied to environmental conflict over land resource allocation in the Cape Region of Baja California Sur, Mexico. Their research evaluated a set of feasible land use patterns on the basis of multiple, conflicting, non-commensurate criteria provided by a group of stakeholders. Their model integrated the Analytic Hierarchy Process, a technique for structuring the decision problem and determining suitability for different land uses, and an integer mathematical programming method that identified the land use pattern that maximized consensus among interest groups.

Although not strictly a work in planning, Dorcetta Taylor’s in-depth analysis of the application of a powerful collective action frame (injustice) to effectively transform national environmental discourse focused directly on the complex intertwined urban issues of race, class, environment, and social justice (Taylor 2000). She skillfully documented the use of several closely related master frames—civil rights, segregation, institutionalized racism, and justice—that were reframed and woven together to form an inseparable whole, the Environmental Justice Paradigm widely used in urban sustainability planning (Campbell, S. 1996), that was linked to concepts of environment and justice shared by the larger society, and not only by minority Americans or socioeconomically disadvantaged whites.

Kaufman and Smith (1999) analyzed issue and conflict frames used by participants in an environmental/land use conflict in the Cleveland metropolitan area over the proposed expansion of a landfill. They considered a range of roles practicing planners might play, including supplying and interpreting information as unbiased or uncommitted technical experts, actively advocating a specific position, reframing issue messages, and providing a type of transformative mediation.

Gregory, McDaniels, and colleagues (Arvai, Gregory, and McDaniels 2001; Gregory 2000; Gregory, McDaniels, and Fields 2001; McDaniels and Gregory 2004) have articulated an approach to environmental decision-making in a public policy context as an alternative to alternative dispute resolution and consensus building, which they contended “pose impediments to the creation of insights for decision-makers and lead to the adoption of inferior policy choices” (Gregory, McDaniels, and Fields 2001, 415). Their model uses a structured approach adapted from behavioral decision research and decision analysis combined with value-focused thinking to lead to improved insight as well as more thoughtful, better informed, and higher quality decisions by focusing simultaneously on deliberation and analysis. They argued that their technique permits a better understanding of participant preferences and enables participants and decision-makers to consider and discuss a wider variety of decision-relevant issues and address vital value trade-offs that may prove critical to success. The environmental values that were investigated consisted of issue-based concerns, such as water quality, jobs, consequences of flooding, and social effects.

In a study of eight intractable environmental/land use conflicts, Elliott, M., Gray, and Lewicki (2002) determined that shifts in frames, as well as reframing, can help make those conflicts less intractable. They found that conflicts may be more about the loss of control or identity among participants in the process than about specific issues and that stable frames persisting over time may promote intractability. Elliott, M., and colleagues concluded that reframing combined with tension and hostility reduction techniques and perspective-taking processes can help establish common ground that can serve as the foundation for agreement (for similar studies see Asah et al. 2012; Elliott, M. and Hanke 2002; Lewicki, Gray, and Elliott 2003; Shmueli, Elliott, and Kaufman 2006; Shmueli 2008). A closely related effort (Elliott, M. and Kaufman 2003) documented the use of shared discursive and interpretive frames for understanding and acting on environmental issues and civic discourse/problem solving to build civic capacity to resolve significant environmental problems despite the existence of extensive prior community conflict (for additional related information see Burgess and Burgess 1996, 2006; Elliott, M. 2003; Kaufman, Gardner, Burgess 2003).

Changes in urban governance in the last several decades through such innovations as citizen involvement in decision-making, collaborative visioning, and public-private partnerships led McCann (2003) to investigate the role discursive framing plays in issues that involve the complex interaction of geospatial and temporal scales. He argued that as scalar priorities are reorganized, from jurisdiction-wide scale to the smaller neighborhood scale of collaborative and smart growth planning, the existing nested political hierarchy would be subjected to stress and may experience organizational problems that are very difficult to overcome.

The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCPC) was critically evaluated by Lindseth (2004) in terms of its failure to use issue framing to establish climate change in local political jurisdictions as an overarching and principal responsibility rather than simply as a one of a number of political agendas vying for attention. Lindseth argued that more appropriately crafted frames would allow the CCPC to focus not only on local climate change mitigation and adaptation techniques but also on forming policies that reject unsustainable development.

Struggles involving a federal housing program in New Orleans and principles of New Urbanism were investigated in terms of the framing tactics used by opposing groups (Elliott, J., Gotham, and Mulligan 2004). Groups on opposite sides of that conflict attempted to legitimize their positions and delegitimize their opponents using highly fluid tactics that involved framing, reframing, and counter-framing. The authors concluded that struggles over urban space have the potential of developing into framing contests in which opposing parties attempt to win by defining and interpreting the key issues and identifying themselves as the “good guys” and their opponents as the “bad guys” in terms of whose proposals were more in tune with the principles of New Urbanism and inner city neighborhood design.

Merrick and Garcia (2004) applied a value-focused thinking process to making decisions about how to improve the current condition of an urban watershed in the Richmond, Virginia, area. They focused on the issue-based values and preferences (e.g. restoring the natural stream channel and improving water quality) of a panel of 16 decision makers rather than on a limited set of watershed improvement alternatives. A model for measuring the quality of the watershed was constructed from the decision makers’ values and preferences and was compared to the results for a hypothetical watershed to reveal gaps or shortcomings. The issue-based values and preferences investigated were focused on the conditions of a specific watershed and not on widely shared core values (see also Merrick et al. 2005).

Analysis of a large-scale urban development project in Europe (Gualini and Majoor 2007) sought to determine how discursive framing on the urban quality of places could affect collective choices and possibly lead to integrating public and private interests (see also Majoor 2011; Salet 2008).

In a random survey of suburban residents, Goetz (2008) investigated whether the words planners use to frame potentially controversial urban issues and policies like affordable housing affected public support. He determined the difference was significant among white, non-Hispanic respondents but insignificant among non-White respondents. Goetz concluded that, given appropriate circumstances, planners might be able to expand policy options previously thought infeasible through the use of carefully articulated issue frames.

In an empirical analysis of associations between community environmentalism and green travel behavior, Kahn and Morris (2009) discussed green beliefs/values as causative agents of what the authors label “voluntary restraint” regarding green travel behavior. However, the authors did not differentiate among environmental actions/behaviors that are motivated by widely shared core values, value-based environmental concerns, or issue-based environmental concerns, making it difficult if not impossible to determine the specific cause(s) of the voluntary restraint behaviors that were investigated.

Although Kennedy et al. (2009) are not planners, their research on understanding the environmental values/behavior gap was not published in a planning journal, and the emphasis of their paper was on individual rather than collective behavior, their focus on core environmental values and beliefs makes their research of interest to this discussion. Kennedy and colleagues used social psychological research by Schwartz (1994a, 1994b) and Stern and colleagues (Stern 2000; Stern and Dietz 1994, Stern et al. 1995; Stern et al. 1999) into the nature of values critical to pro-environmental behavior to help them understand why Canadians are characterized by a gap between self-identified pro-environmental beliefs and behavior. They concluded that the lack of appropriate knowledge available to individuals formed a significant hurdle to their practice of environmentally supportive behavior and that well-timed and positioned information can be a powerful behavioral incentive.

A study of complex public attitudes regarding urban development by Lewis and Baldassare (2010) found that although demographic attributes were strongly associated with various views concerning tradeoffs, only conservative political ideology was consistently associated with opposition to compact development. They concluded that advocates of compact development might consider framing that development to appeal more to political conservatives, which could be interpreted as a call to focus on shared values. However, the implications of that finding or techniques with which to implement their conclusion were not identified or explored in their study.

In several discussions of ecological planning, Ernst (2012) and Ernst and Weitz (2013) commented that appealing to shared environmental values constituted a primary means of generating public support in terms of social capacity and will for pro-environmental measures. However, that suggestion focused on issue-based environmental beliefs such as promoting biodiversity or protecting sensitive habitat and was neither developed in terms of procedural detail nor grounded in empirical research that demonstrated such an approach was feasible.

McEvoy, Fünfgeld, and Bosomworth (2013) briefly examined four conceptual issue frames in the context of climate change adaptation in Australia: hazards, risk management, vulnerability, and resilience. They argued that the election of various issue frames can lead to different types of climate change assessments, especially in light of political/ideological factors and organizational preferences held by stakeholders and policy-makers. Among their main conclusions was that issue frames that emphasize resilience and strengthening local communities are increasingly preferred by the public over frames that emphasize risk and vulnerability.

Most articles on framing or reframing environmental measures published in planning journals discuss issue frames, conflict frames, or discursive frames and have not addressed the concept of appealing to the widely shared values that serve as guiding principles in a person’s life (see Rokeach 1973). Although a number of papers were concerned with shared principles regarding environmental issue-based topics (Arvai, Gregory, and McDaniels 2001; Ernst 2012; Ernst and Weitz 2013; Gregory, McDaniels, and Fields 2001; Kahn and Morris 2009; Lewis and Baldassare 2010; and Merrick and Garcia 2004), they did not explore the use of widely shared values in framing environmental measures. The only exception was Kennedy et al. (2009) and their research was on individual behavior and not on planning-related issues. The challenge, then, is to demonstrate that widely shared American values can be linked to environmental behaviors of interest to planners through a targeted message framing process that results in maximizing agreement, mitigating constraints, and devising strategies that appeal to a broad base of citizens and stakeholders regardless of political-ideological orientation.

Widely Shared American Values and Pro-Environmental Behavior

Empirical psychological research into methods for organizing values began in the late 1960s and continues (Rokeach 1968 and 1971; Schwartz and Bilsky 1987; Triandis 1996; Weber and Stern 2011). As part of that empirical effort, Dunlap, Grieneeks, and Rokeach (1983) argued that pro-environmental concerns and behavior are rooted in human values. Somewhat later, Schwartz (1992, 1994) created a widely accepted empirical model that classified values as falling along two complex continua, from self-enhancement to self-transcendence and from openness to change to conservatism-tradition. Schwartz’s research found that Americans as a group score the highest on the self-interest dimension and relatively low on self-transcendence (Poortinga, Steg, and Vlek 2004). He also determined that Americans score high on openness to change (Markowitz et al. 2012) and low on conservative values (Schultz and Zelezny 2003). Another key finding was that scoring high on self-interest values did not correlate with scoring low on self-enhancement. That determination is significant to this paper and to environmental planners in that values held by people are differentiated, complex, multi-layered, and not mutually exclusive. Having high self-interest values does not indicate that all Americans endorse those values to the exclusion of others or that aspects of both self-transcendence and self-interest cannot be held simultaneously by the same individual at varying levels of intensity (Schultz and Zelezny 2003). Thus, pro-environmental actions not only can arise from multiple, conflicting values but also from multiple, conflicting motivations and intentions (Brandon and Lewis, 1999; Lindenberg and Steg 2007).

Research into PEB[3] by De Young (1985, 1996) focused on intrinsic motivation or personal satisfaction, a component of the self-interest value domain that is derived from participation in pro-environmental activities. De Young’s investigation of the structure of intrinsic satisfaction with respect to PEB found that it is a complex, multi-dimensional variable, with four discernible aspects that he tested in nine separate empirical studies over the course of a decade: satisfaction from striving for personal competence; satisfaction from frugal, thoughtful consumption; satisfaction from participating in community activities; and satisfaction from comfort/convenience. Of the four aspects of intrinsic satisfaction, De Young (2000, 522) identified the human desire for competence as a primary source of behavioral motivation and argued that it “may readily explain the conditions under which people will consider adopting ERB [Environmentally Responsible Behavior].” De Young (1996, 391) argued “that competence motivation is integral with human well-being” and also found that since behavior associated with competence consists of highly focused activities it is intrinsically reinforcing, meaning worth doing in its own right for its inherent personal satisfactions. The blueprint De Young presented for framing PEB as an exercise in competence included providing appropriate context complete with readily available procedural information[4] that allows and encourages actions to be taken in a supportive milieu.

Public involvement, the participation category identified by De Young (1985) as generating intrinsic satisfaction, is one of the primary techniques used to include the citizenry in meaningful contributions to the planning process and to local governance (Brody 2003b; Brody, Godschalk, and Burby 2003; Hawkins and Wang 2012; Susskind and Cruikshank 2006). De Young (2000) presented participation as a value dimension that included a broad range of aspects, including enjoyment-satisfaction derived from working with others to achieve common goals and the willingness to spend time and effort to share skills and knowledge. Kaplan (2000) regarded appropriately structured citizen involvement that included participant-based problem-solving as a powerful counter to feelings of helplessness and also regarded citizen participation as “inextricably linked” to the framing of pro-environmental measures. Consequently, focusing value-based frames on citizens and stakeholders working together to solve environmental challenges (the drive for competence combined with love of community and openness to change) in a collaborative, participatory context is highly likely to generate broad-based support.

Research on the Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan 2000; Ryan and Deci 2000) indicated that the satisfaction of psychological needs for competence and autonomy combined with “social contexts that support satisfaction of those needs, promote the internalization of autonomous or functional forms of regulation and well-being” (quoted in Pelletier and Sharp 2008, 211). The contention is that contexts that are autonomy-supportive (encouraging people to make informed, un-coerced decisions) and informational, which are characteristics of well-structured citizen participation efforts, are likely to enable self-determined motivation and optimal functioning, elements that are necessary for effective PEB.

In an effort to determine the basis for environmental behavior, Paul Stern and various colleagues (Stern and Dietz 1994; Stern, Dietz, and Kalof 1993; Stern et al. 1995) proposed that attitudes of environmental concern (see Alibeli and White 2011; Dunlap and Jones 2002) are rooted in a person’s value system and that individuals could express the same level of general concern, for example about the issue of water pollution, for the following fundamentally different reasons. Polluted water may be dangerous to my health. Polluted water may be dangerous to the health of children. Polluted water may damage ecosystems. Stern and Dietz (1994) labeled those value-based environmental concerns egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric. Egoistic concerns are defined as self-interest based on an individual valuing self above others and the environment and calculating benefits that would accrue personally before making a decision. Social-altruistic concerns focus on others, such as family, children, community, strangers, and humanity even when costs to self are incurred (Batson 1994). Those individuals scoring high on biospheric concerns are likely to decide whether to engage in pro-environmental acts by considering apparent costs and benefits to something that might be as loosely-defined as “nature” or as specific as an individual ecological niche (de Groot and Steg 2007). The research of Stern and others into the different value foundations of environmental concern was further developed as the Value-Belief-Norm Theory, which proposed that pro-environmental concerns and behaviors are likely to be clustered around common value themes (Stern and Dietz 1994; Stern et al. 1999). That research is significant as it demonstrates that egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric concerns are related to pro-environmental intentions and behaviors through a structured system of values, beliefs, and pro-environmental personal norms.[5]

Since mere involvement in PEB does not distinguish among people who exhibit value-based concerns regarding environmental problems (de Groot and Steg 2007), additional research concentrated on explicating the value-based dimensions and motivations of PEB. Cross-cultural survey data on the three value-based environmental concerns and PEB revealed that social-altruistic dimensions are the most highly rated (Schultz and Zelezny 2003). A second significant research finding was that self-transcendent values positively correlate with biospheric concerns while self-interest values relate negatively to biospheric concerns (de Groot and Steg 2009). Despite those determinations, many social scientists argued that, through application of appropriate framing techniques, self-interest values are likely to lead to egoistic concerns for the environment and PEB (De Young 2000). Empirical research by Bator and Cialdini (2000) and Cialdini (2003) strengthened that position when they found that framing PEB public service announcements in terms of self-interest values resulted in higher positive responses than if the same measures were composed in altruistic-biospheric value dimensions.

Research beginning in the 1980s determined that self-interest values (including the closely related egoistic concerns) can work together with altruistic-biospheric orientations to promote PEB (see De Young 2000; Stern et al. 1995) and that self-interest values are consistent with altruistic motives (Jensen 1994). In studies that examined variables leading to longer participation in volunteering, Snyder and colleagues (Clary and Snyder 1999; Omoto and Snyder 1995; Snyder and Omoto 1991) reported that people who scored higher in terms of self-oriented motives tend to volunteer for longer periods than people who hold more social-altruistic values. Those findings are strong indications that distinguishing among value-based environmental concerns is both relevant and significant (Steg, Dreijerink, and Abrahamse 2005, 424) when planners frame pro-environmental measures.

Appealing to altruism exclusively as a principal motivator for PEB has a number of drawbacks, chief of which is it of necessity requires not only self-sacrifice but also acting against self-interest (Kaplan 2000). Since Americans as a group score high on self-interest and low on altruism/self-transcendence, the difficulty of basing pro-environmental appeals exclusively on altruistic or altruistic-biospheric concerns should be obvious. In terms of the environment, altruism is also associated with giving up modern creature comforts in exchange for an austere, even bleak, future (De Young 1990-1991), characteristics unlikely to attract support from most Americans. A solution to the uncertainty as to favoring altruistic or biospheric concerns regarding pro-environmental measures was proposed by de Groot and Steg (2009, 5): “Egoistic values should always [emphasis in the original] be linked to altruistic and biospheric values because it is ultimately the altruistic and biospheric values that need to be salient to reach stable pro-environmental behavior.” They contend that a strategy focused on making self-interest/egoistic values compatible with altruistic-biospheric concerns has the best chance of promoting stable PEB, which is a combined value-concern approach that has broad-based appeal. The logic of that approach was indicated by Mansbridge (1990, 133), who pointed out that altruistic concerns must coexist with self-interest within the same individual “to prevent the extinction of either the altruistic motivation or the altruist.”

In the 2000s, several social psychologists initiated a series of empirical analyses to determine whether American concerns about the environment had moral foundations (Haidt 2008). They found that environmental values are directly related to moral dimensions and motivations and are also highly polarized with respect to political ideology (Feinberg and Willer 2011 and 2013; Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009; Graham et al. 2011). That empirical research identified five moral foundations that appeal in varying degrees to both liberals and conservatives: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation (Graham et al. 2013). Surveys conducted by the moral foundation theorists demonstrated that conservatives value all five foundations fairly evenly but liberals value the first two higher than the others (Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009; McAdams et al. 2008). That research also found that liberals and conservatives are often at cross purposes because their values and judgments regarding environmental issues are based on differing configurations of the five moral foundations. The authors determined that both groups undervalue the validity of the moral systems held by the other, though that condition is more characteristic of liberals than conservatives.

Recent research found that the results of five empirical studies conducted into the moral dimensions of environmental issues “suggest that political polarization around environmental issues is not inevitable but can be reduced by crafting proenvironmental arguments that resonate with the values of American conservatives” (Feinberg and Willer 2013, 61). That research determined that environmental discussions in the U.S. are based largely on values related to harm and care, moral/ethical concerns more deeply held by progressives than by conservatives and “that reframing proenvironmental rhetoric in terms of purity, a moral value resonating primarily among conservatives, largely eliminated the difference between liberals’ and conservatives’ environmental attitudes” (Feinberg and Willer 2013, 56). They concluded that political polarization around environmental issues is avoidable and can be reduced by using pro-environmental frames that resonate with the values of American conservatives, thus closing the gap between liberals and conservatives in environmental concern and behavior, a contention that echoes research on shared values and value-based concerns (De Young 1985, Kaplan 2000; Schultz 2002; Schwartz 1994a).

Constructing Pro-Environmental Frames to Generate Broad-Based Support

Many environmental planners work in local and regional jurisdictions populated by citizens and stakeholders who hold ideological positions ranging across the board in a complex potpourri of worldviews. To function well, those planners must be able to present pro-environmental proposals in a manner that enables their passage despite the mix of worldviews held by people in the jurisdiction.

The question that must be addressed is how environmental planners, the greater majority of whom may not be familiar with psychological research into values, are going to be able to construct appropriate pro-environmental frames that will elicit broad-spectrum support from the public based on the information presented above. In recognition of those challenges, the materials on environmental values, value-based concerns, and moral domains that are provided in this section and in Table 1 constitute both practical guidelines and tools environmental planners can use to construct frames that link PEB to people’s basic values and their everyday lives.

The best way to minimize opposition to environmental policy measures is not to present overwhelming scientific facts or evidence but to frame the message in values/morals shared by the parties involved and abandon the use of issue or collective action frames as the principal method of communicating with the public. The goals of minimizing opposition and generating broad-based support for pro-environmental measures can be accomplished by applying the findings of social science research to the framing process, especially those that identify using self-interest/egoistic values in combination with altruistic and biospheric concerns. Variations of values, moral considerations, and value-based environmental concerns that can be used to frame pro-environmental measures are provided in outline form in Table 1 so planners can familiarize themselves with the concepts shorn of embellishment. Those elements have been collected from empirical social science research studies discussed herein.

Table 1: Value-Based Concerns/Morals for Framing Pro-Environmental Messages
Concerns	Specific Sub-Concerns
Egoistic	Personal love of and pride in country/culture/community.
	Concern for one’s own financial betterment.
	Desire for self to have a better quality of life.
	Personal well-being/health.
	Preserving natural places makes me feel spiritually renewed.
	Experiencing natural places helps me learn about the environment
	Personal enjoyment/satisfaction gained through competence, participation in community, frugality, comfort/convenience.
	Living responsibility by following rules, norms, or procedures.
Altruistic	A world free of war and environmental conflicts brings peace to all.
	Parks and natural areas are for everyone to enjoy.
	Working towards environmental justice helps the poor and disadvantaged.
	Save our parks, natural areas, and the planet for future generations.
	Planting native species in my yard will benefit all our neighbors.
	Beautifying our community benefits all residents and visitors.
	Improve the natural experience for all by removing exotic species.
	Living a simpler life and lowering our carbon footprint helps poor people in our local community and all over the world.
Biospheric	Respect the Earth.
	Live in harmony with nature.
	Nature should be appreciated for its own sake.
	Humans are an intrinsic part of nature.
	All parts of the natural world are interconnected.
	Conserve/restore the natural world.
	Protect endangered species
	Increasing biodiversity will secure a sustainable future for all.
	Controlling waste and pollution will benefit nature.
	Using renewable resources is better for the Earth.
	Protect habitats used by traditional cultures.
	Promote organic farming.
	Cutting back on our consumer lifestyle will help the Earth recover.
Moral Domains	Fairness/reciprocity: We owe it to future generations to protect the environment.
	Harm/care: The best way to care for the Earth is to increase biodiversity and protect native species.
	In-group/loyalty: Working together we can reduce CO2 emissions while growing the economy and protecting our way of life.
	Authority/respect: Providing fresh air and clean water is a way to show our respect for the Earth.
	Purity/sanctity/stewardship: We can cleanse the Earth by removing harmful pollutants and hazardous wastes.

In the approach to constructing pro-environmental frames to generate broad-based support proposed herein, measures can be framed using a single value/moral domain or combinations of values/morals and value-based concerns. Based on empirical research in social psychology, it is the author’s contention that combining self-interest and openness to change with various value-based environmental concerns (egoistic-biospheric-altruistic) and moral domains is the most effective approach in terms of creating the broadest-based support for environmental measures. However, since framing measures in terms of shared values is not a technique with which many environmental planners have first-hand experience, the sub-sections below provide examples of message frames created by national environmental organizations as well as examples generated by the author. Examples are provided for individual environmental concerns/moral domains and for combinations of different values/concerns/morals to demonstrate the importance of using multiple orientations in creating pro-environmental messages. In each of the examples provided, value frames take precedence over issue frames, which play secondary roles if they appear at all. Note that the frames below are positive and do not project negative images of the environment that could make people uncomfortable, invoke rejection responses, or send a muddled message that environmentally irresponsible behavior is widespread and therefore acceptable even if not socially approved (Cialdini 2003).

Individual Value/Concern Frames

Examples of frames using each of the three individual value-based concerns—egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric—and moral domains are provided below. Three of the four examples start with slogans or mission statements from nationally-known environmental organizations that are followed by author-generated frames.

Egoistic Frames

A.   “Wilderness belongs to you. It’s a place to enjoy.”[6] The Wilderness Society

B.   “Explore, enjoy and protect the planet.”[7] Sierra Club

C.   I walk or bike to work almost every day because I want the air in my city to be as clean as possible.

D.  I am relaxed and at peace when I walk in wooded areas around the city because I feel I can make a difference by being a just steward of the Earth.

E.   If you love fishing in clean, free-flowing streams, the County’s Annual Stream Improvement Project is a perfect opportunity to make a difference.

The emphasis on self-enhancing concerns in the professionally crafted slogans issued by national environmental organizations is echoed in the next three frames. Note that the self-enhancing aspect of all five measures is not off-putting or jarring as it might have been if the appeal had been to interests that were exclusively self-centered, which points to the critical difference between self-enhancing messages and selfishness. Examples C and E also contain an implied openness to change dimension.

Altruistic Frames

A.   “To discuss and explore the linkages between environmental quality and social justice, and to promote dialogue, increased understanding and appropriate action.”[8] Sierra Club

B.   “Inspiring Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future.”[9] National Wildlife Federation

C.   If developed countries, like the U.S. and England, and developing nations, like India and China, adopt low-carbon lifestyles, people all over the world will benefit.

D.  Protect the Earth for future generations by reducing energy use today.

E.   Adopt low-carbon lifestyles that include walking or biking to work and running errands to ensure everyone has clean air to breathe and a better quality of life.

The emphasis on altruistic concerns in the professionally crafted slogans issued by the two national environmental organizations is echoed in the next three frames in such phrases as “people all over the world,” “future generations,” and “everyone has clear air to breathe.” Note that the author-generated examples also imply openness to change.

Biospheric Frames

A.   “Building a future in which people live in harmony with nature.”[10] World Wildlife Fund

B.   “We work to preserve the natural systems on which all life depends, focusing on the most critical environmental problems.”[11] Environmental Defense Fund

C.   Celebrate Earth Day by planting native vegetation in your backyard.

D.  Love and respect your Mother Earth.

E.   Help your city adopt urban-ecological planning practices that promote biodiversity and protect sensitive environments.

The emphasis on biospheric concerns in the professionally crafted slogans issued by the World Wildlife Fund and the Environmental Defense Fund is echoed in the next three author-generated frames that use such phrases as “planting native vegetation,” “your Mother Earth,” and “promote biodiversity.” Four of the five frames are positive and do not project negative images of the environment. Although the second example frame, that of the Environmental Defense Fund, mentions environmental problems, it does so only in general terms and provides no details that would enhance the formation of negative images or send mixed measures that could be misinterpreted. As in the subsection above, the author-generated examples also imply openness to change.

Moral Domain Frames

A.   Working with your family, friends, neighbors, and people in the community can result in solving many local environmental problems.

Moral domains appealed to: in-group loyalty; love of community

B.   Breathing foul air and drinking contaminated water is disgusting; as stewards of the Earth we must clean up our environment.

Moral domains appealed to: purity/sanctity/stewardship

Because appealing to moral domains held by conservatives is a relatively new approach, no examples from national environmental organizations have been found. Therefore, all the examples provided above are author-generated. Note that since two moral domains, care/harm and fairness/reciprocity, appeal largely to liberals and are used frequently in framing environmental messages and the third, loyalty/betrayal, has minimal environmental involvement they are not included above.

Combined Frames

The various value orientations and value-based concerns combined in the frames below are listed after each individual frame. Since the self-interest/egoistic orientation has multiple variations, those dimensions are listed separately. As in the subsection above, the first framing examples are those created by national environmental organizations and the ones that follow are author-generated.

A.   “To conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the Earth’s biological diversity.”[12] National Audubon Society

Value-based concerns appealed to: biospheric, altruistic.

B.   “We protect wildlife because they inspire us.”[13] World Wildlife Fund

Value-based concerns appealed to: biospheric, egoistic.

C.   Riding my bike to work and to shop instead of driving is better for my wallet, my personal health, the community I live in, future generations, and for the Earth; plus I’ve lost thirty pounds since I started riding.

Values/concerns appealed to: self-interest/egoistic (competence, frugality, love of community, personal gain, personal wellbeing), altruistic, biospheric; the openness to change value is also implied.

D.  Respecting the Earth in every neighborhood in our city is a key for you, your family, and your friends/neighbors being able to work together to build good, healthy, productive lives.

Values/concerns appealed to: biospheric, altruistic, self-interest/egoistic (love of family/community, participation, competence, personal wellbeing, personal gain); the openness to change value is also implied.

E.   Working together to restore the natural integrity of our community’s ecosystems and habitats benefits the future for us and our families, our quality of life, and the Earth itself.

Values/concerns appealed to: self-interest/egoistic (competence, participation-problem solving, love of family/community), biospheric, and altruistic; the openness to change value is also implied. Moral domains appealed to: purity/sanctity, environmental stewardship, love of family/community.

With the exception of the slogans or mission statements of the national environmental organizations, all the frames above combine egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric concerns and also appeal to conservative moral dimensions through the love of family and community. In addition, with the exception of those created by environmental organizations, the frames include at least three types of self-interest/egoistic values and most have more. That focus is intentional and follows numerous research findings regarding self-interest values/concerns and PEB (de Groot and Steg 2009; De Young 2000; Kaplan 2000; Schultz 2002; Schwartz 1994a). All the combined value/concern frames except Audubon’s are self-oriented and community-oriented (Loroz 2007) and most indirectly appeal to being open to change in that the sought after action is not currently in effect. Pro-environmental frames that appeal to combined values/concerns may differ somewhat in tone and focus from traditional planning frames, but the underlying meanings are not greatly different.

Discussion

Solely relying on facts to persuade is fraught with difficulty (Schon and Rein 1995), especially since opposing parties frequently use the same facts to argue different sides of the same issue (Elliott, Gotham, and Mulligan 2004). Appealing to objective, scientific evidence to win an argument can run afoul of deeply held beliefs and ideologies (Haidt, Graham, and Joseph 2009; Kahan 2013). But framing pro-environmental messages with values and value-based concerns already shared by most Americans presents environmental planners and managers with opportunities to find common ground by avoiding politically and ideologically charged positions and maximizing agreement.

Many pro-environmental messages use altruistic and biospheric frames (e.g. caring for the environment and fairness/justice for future generations) that appeal largely to liberals, some moderates, and relatively few conservatives (De Young 2000; Schultz and Zelezny 2003). Creating frames with broad-spectrum appeal centered on self-interest/egoistic values requires changing that status quo and weaving together several shared value/moral threads. Although those value/moral positions may have separate origins, when combined and applied to message frames they increase the effectiveness of the message and motivate individuals to adopt pro-environmental measures despite differences in political beliefs (Feinberg and Willer 2013). Depending on issue context, those shared self-interest/egoistic domains should be combined with value-based altruistic and biospheric concerns to create environmental messages that will be more accepted and supported across the political/ideological spectrum than measures that only appeal to those who have biospheric or altruistic orientations (de Groot and Steg 2009).

Planners and managers who are committed to finding the most appropriate value frames for pro-environmental measures should be aware of a conclusion on human behavior reached by social psychologist Daniel Batson through empirical research: “We may be social in thought and action, but in motivation we are capable of caring only for ourselves” (cited in De Young 1996, 394). A number of empirical studies demonstrate that framing pro-environmental measures to appeal to self-interest/egoistic value orientations, especially love of community/culture, community/civic benefit, family safety/security, and the measures of intrinsic satisfaction—competence, participation, frugality, and comfort/convenience—is likely to increase the acceptance of environmental measures and achieve broad-based support (Bain et al. 2012; De Young 1996; Kaplan 2000; Kennedy et al. 2009). Those value/moral dimensions can easily be woven together by environmental planners into a participation-oriented, problem-solving fabric that would bypass opposition and appeal to a broad audience. As social psychologists contend, PEB is not determined by a single variable or motivation but is multiply determined (Allen and Ferrand 1999; Geller 1995; Moisander 2007) and is associated with multiply desirable choices (Kaplan 2000). Consequently, the primary task for environmental planners desiring to create pro-environmental measures that maximize agreement is to frame those measures with several value/moral orientations that are congruous with the self-interest value most Americans hold dear and that are appropriate to the context of the issue. Accomplishing that goal requires identifying value/moral domains that engage widely shared motivations and combining those values with value-based biospheric-altruistic concerns and openness to change. As Goetz (2008) has demonstrated, as planners/managers our choice of words and frames make a difference.

Creating pro-environmental measures that resonate with moral values held by conservatives requires understanding how those moral dimensions relate to self-interest and egoistic values and also to altruistic-biospheric concerns (Feinberg and Willer 2013; Graham et al. 2011). For example, the role of purity and sanctity with respect to protecting streams and natural landscapes from pollution and wastes that can contaminate people should be evident. That moral protection of self and others and nature fits well with the mainstream American values discussed herein. In-group loyalty as a moral foundation is strikingly similar to self-interest values (love of community and the closely related civic pride). Therefore, careful combination of the moral foundations that appeal to conservatives with self-interest/egoistic values and openness to change has the potential of reducing partisan polarization on pro-environmental issues and increasing broad-based support.

The combination of specific values/morals will vary with the nature of the environmental policy/program and especially with context and local knowledge and capabilities, indicating that for value frames to be successful they must also address local conditions and trends. The goal for planners/managers is to craft pro-environmental measures that are grounded in local context and will appeal to a diversity of potential respondents, including those for whom self-interest/egoistic concerns dominate and those for whom biospheric-altruistic orientations are predominant. Thus, the primary focus for planners/managers in creating pro-environmental messages should not be on the issue itself but on linking widely shared environmental values/concerns/morals to desired actions and outcomes.

Concluding Remarks

Many environmental planners/managers instinctively try to frame measures to find consensus or a common dominator in their audiences without being aware of the logic behind those efforts. This paper presents an approach to that process that is based on more than four decades of empirical research in social psychology into how widely shared values are related to environmental behavior. A significant quotation from empirical research conducted into the moral dimensions of environmental issues that was cited above bears repeating: “. . . political polarization around environmental issues is not inevitable but can be reduced by crafting proenvironmental arguments that resonate with the values of American conservatives” (Feinberg and Willer 2013, 61). By paraphrasing that quotation, it is possible to summarize the intent of this paper: Political polarization regarding environmental issues can be avoided by appealing to widely shared American values. If the procedures presented in this paper are followed, disagreement over pro-environmental issue frames should be minimized.

Although this paper is about commonly shared values, many points raised here mesh well with existing capabilities of environmental planners (Shandas and Messer 2008). One of the best matches is that of public participation featuring a collaborative, consensus building, problem-solving context that engages individual competence and a sense of community pride (Pelletier and Sharp 2008), all of which are self-interest values that have direct environmental applications. Innes and Booher (2004, 428) defined that type of consensus building/collaborative participation as an authentic dialogue wherein all involved individuals are equally empowered and informed. As confirmation of that fit, Burby’s (2003) study of citizen involvement found that evidence from plan-making processes indicated that greater stakeholder involvement resulted in stronger comprehensive plans and planning proposals that were more likely to be implemented.

Environmental planners/managers should also be aware that step-by-step procedural guidance in a public participation effort is an essential form of behavior-relevant knowledge transfer (Halford and Sheehan 1991) and can play a critical role in the adoption of pro-environmental measures. Context-appropriate environmental information helps to reduce individual confusion and uncertainty about how to proceed and gives people opportunities to develop familiarity, confidence, and competence in terms of the proposed environmental measure (De Young 1996; Kaplan 1990).

Another important fit between applications of environmental psychology and planning involves information and education. Many researchers believe that PEB is dependent on knowledge and learning (Gamba and Oskamp 1994; McDaniels and Gregory 2004; Kennedy et al. 2009), which points to another role planners/managers frequently play, that of information dissemination. In that role it is crucial for planners to keep in mind that relationships between environmental values/concerns/morals and behavior are stronger when environmental knowledge is higher (Gamba and Oskamp 1994). Meinhold and Malkus (2005) indicated that information can function as a significant moderator for the relationship between environmental attitudes and behaviors, pointing to reasons for strengthening the information dissemination role for environmental planners and managers (Grant 2009; Hanna 2000).

The boundaries separating stages on the continuum between agreement and intractable conflict may be difficult to define with precision but are likely to include agreement – disagreement – opposition – dispute – intractable conflict. Although some analysts may identify fewer or more stages along that axis, the goal of this paper is for environmental planners and managers to understand that the most critical stage in terms of framing pro-environmental measures is the first: agreement. Every other stage involves some level of controversy or struggle that threatens the adoption of pro-environmental issues, policies, and programs that benefit the public as well as the jurisdiction.

The advantages of using a system that appeals to widely shared values are numerous and include: 1) maximizing agreement and minimizing contention, 2) avoiding win-lose or adversarial situations in which parties work to discredit or defeat their opponents, 3) engaging citizens/stakeholders in competence- and consensus-building, and 4) framing pro-environmental measures in ways that address the scope and intensity of the environmental concerns held by most citizens and stakeholders. As environmental planners/managers know well, the most difficult issues to resolve are not various civic actions regarding pro-environmental policies, programs, or projects but regulatory measures that affect real property, which is when the natural resource firm-real estate-developer community typically springs into coordinated and well-orchestrated response to protect their turf. One way to resolve that dilemma is for planners and managers to organize and frame pro-environmental efforts as suggested in this paper long before lines are drawn in the sand, opinions harden, harsh words are exchanged, and a controversy is on the road to becoming intractable.

References

Achen, Christopher H. 2002. Parental socialization and rational party identification. Political Behavior 24:151-170.

Ajzen, Icek, and Martin Fishbein. 1980. Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Alibeli, Madalla A., and Neil R. White. 2011. The structure of environmental concern. International Journal of Business and Social Science 2:1-8.

Allen, James B., and Jennifer L. Ferrand. 1999. Environmental locus of control, sympathy, and proenvironmental behavior: A test of Geller’s actively caring hypothesis. Environment and Behavior 31:338-353.

Allmendinger, Phillip, and Mark Tewdwr-Jones. 2002. The communicative turn in urban planning: Unravelling paradigmatic, imperialistic and moralistic dimensions. Space and Polity 6:5-24.

Arvai, Joseph L., Robin Gregory, and Timothy L. McDaniels. 2001. Testing a structured decision approach: Value-focused thinking for deliberative risk communication. Risk Analysis 21:1065-1076.

Asah, Stanley T., David N. Bengston, Keith Wendt, and Kristen C. Nelson. 2012. Diagnostic reframing of intractable environmental problems: Case of a contested multiparty public land-use conflict. Journal of Environmental Management 108:108-119.

Bain, Paul G., Matthew J. Hornsey, Renata Bongiorno, and Carla Jeffries. 2012. Promoting pro-environmental action in climate change deniers. Nature Climate Change 2:600-603.

Bator, Renee J., and Robert B. Cialdini. 2000. The application of persuasion theory to the development of effective proenvironmental public service announcements. Journal of Social Issues 56:527-541.

Batson, C. Daniel. 1994. Why act for the public good? Four answers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20:603-610.

Booher, David E., and Judith E. Innes. 2002. Network power in collaborative planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research 21:221-236.

Boysen, Guy A., and David L. Vogel. 2007. Biased assimilation and attitude polarization in response to learning about biological explanations of homosexuality. Sex Roles 57:755-762.

Brandon, Gwendolyn, and Alan Lewis. 1999. Reducing household energy consumption: A qualitative and quantitative field study. Journal of Environmental Psychology 19:75-85.

Brody, Samuel D. 2003a. Examining the effects of biodiversity on the ability of local plans to manage ecological systems. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 46:817-837.

Brody, Samuel D., 2003b. Measuring the effects of stakeholder participation on the quality of local plans based on the principles of collaborative ecosystem management. Journal of Planning Education and Research 22:407-419.

Brody, Samuel D., David R. Godschalk, and Raymond J. Burby. 2003. Mandating citizen participation in plan making: Six strategic planning choices. Journal of the American Planning Association 69:245-264.

Brown, Gregory G., and Patrick Reed. 2000 Validation of forest values typology for use in national forest planning. Forest Science 46: 240-247.

Burby, Raymond J. 2003. Making plans that matter: Citizen involvement and government action. Journal of the American Planning Association 69:33-49.

Burgess, Heidi, and Guy Burgess. (1996) Constructive confrontation: A transformative approach to intractable conflicts. Conflict Resolution Quarterly 13:305–322.

Burgess, Heidi, and Guy Burgess. 2006. Intractability and the frontier of the field. Conflict Resolution Quarterly 24:177-186.

Campbell, Marcia C. 2003. Intractability in environmental disputes: Exploring a complex construct. Journal of Planning Literature 17:360-371.

Campbell, Scott. (1996). Green cities, growing cities, just cities? Urban planning and the contradictions of sustainable development. Journal of the American Planning Association 62:296-312.

Cantrill, James G., and Susan L. Senecah. (2001). Using the ‘sense of self-in-place’ construct in the context of environmental policy-making and landscape planning. Environmental Science and Policy 4:185-203.

Cialdini, Robert B. 2003. Crafting normative measures to protect the environment. Current Directions in Psychological Science 12:105-109.

Clary, E. Gil, and Mark Snyder. 1999. The motivations to volunteer: Theoretical and practical considerations. Current Directions in Psychological Science 8:156-159.

Corbett, Julia B. 2006. Communicating nature: How we create and understand environmental measures. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Dane, Erik, and Michael G. Pratt. 2007. Exploring intuition and its role in managerial decision making. Academy of Management Review 32:33-54.

Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. 2000. The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry 11:227-268.

de Groot, Judith I. M., and Linda Steg. 2007. Values, beliefs, and environmental behavior: Validation of an instrument to measure egoistic, altruistic and biospheric value orientations in five countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 38:318-332.

de Groot, Judith I. M., and Linda Steg. 2008. Value orientations to explain beliefs related to environmental significant behavior: How to measure egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric value orientations. Environment and Behavior 40:330-354.

de Groot, Judith I. M., and Linda Steg. 2009. Mean or green: Which values can promote stable pro-environmental behavior? Conservation Letters 2:61-66.

De Young, Raymond. 1985. Encouraging environmentally appropriate behavior: The role of intrinsic motivation. Journal of Environmental Systems 15:281-292.

De Young, Raymond. 1990-1991. Some psychological aspects of living lightly: Desired lifestyle patterns and conservation behavior. Journal of Environmental Systems 20:215-227.

De Young, Raymond. 1993. Changing behavior and making it stick: The conceptualization and management of conservation behavior. Environment and Behavior 25:485-505.

De Young, Raymond. 1996. Some psychological aspects of a reduced consumption lifestyle: The role of intrinsic satisfaction and competence. Environment and Behavior 28:358-409.

De Young, Raymond. 2000. Expanding and evaluating motives for environmentally responsible behavior. Journal of Social Issues 56:509-526.

Dietz, Thomas, Amy Fitzgerald, and Rachael Shwom. 2005. Environmental values. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30:335-374.

Dunlap, Riley E., J. Keith Grieneeks, and Milton Rokeach. 1983. Human values and pro-environmental behavior. In Energy and material resources: Attitudes, values, and public policy, edited by W. David Conn, 145-169. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Dunlap, Riley E., and Robert E. Jones. 2002. Environmental concern: Conceptual and measurement issues. In Handbook of Environmental Sociology, edited by Riley Dunlap and William Michelson, 482-542. London: Greenwood Press.

Elliott, James R., Kevin F. Gotham, and Melinda J. Mulligan. 2004. Framing the urban: Struggles over HOPE VI and new urbanism in a historic city. City and Community 3:373-394.

Elliott, Michael, Barbara Gray, and Roy J. Lewicki. (2002). Lessons learned about the framing and reframing of intractable environmental conflicts. In R. J. Lewicki, B. Gray, and M. Elliott (Eds.), Making sense of intractable environmental conflicts: Concepts and cases (pp. 409-435). Washington, DC: Island Press.

Elliott, Michael. (2003). Risk perception frames in environmental decision making. Environmental Practice, 5: 214-222.

Elliott, Michael, and Ralph Hanke. (2003). Framing effects in toxic disputes: Cross-case analysis. In Roy Lewicki, Barbara Gray, and Michael Elliott (Eds.). Making sense of intractable environmental conflicts: Concepts and cases (pp. 333-351). Washington, DC: Island Press.

Elliott, Michael, and Sanda Kaufman. (2003). Building civic capacity to resolve environmental conflicts. Environmental Practice 5:265-272.

Ernst, Robert T. (2012). The myth of sustainable cities. Practicing Planner, 10(1). Retrieved from http://www.planning.org/practicingplanner/2012/spr/

Ernst, Robert T., and Jerry Weitz. (2013). Moving beyond conventional environmental planning. Practicing Planner, 11, 1: Retrieved from http://www.planning.org/practicingplanner/2013/spr/

Faludi, Andreas. (1996). Framing with images. Environment and Planning B 23:93-108.

Faludi, Andreas. (2000). The performance of spatial planning. Planning Practice and Research 15:299-318.

Feinberg, Matthew, and Robb Willer. 2011. Apocalypse soon? Dire measures reduce belief in global warming by contradicting just-world beliefs. Psychological Science 22:34-38.

Feinberg, Matthew, and Robb Willer. 2013. The moral roots of environmental attitudes. Psychological Science 24:56-62.

Festinger, Leon. 1957. A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Feygina, Irina, John T. Jost, and Rachel E. Goldsmith. 2010. System justification, the denial of global warming, and the possibility of “system sanctioned change.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36:326-338.

Fishbein, Martin, and Icek Ajzen. 1975. Belief, attitude, intention and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Forester, John F. 1999. The deliberative practitioner: Encouraging participatory planning processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Frame, Tanis M., Thomas Gunton, and J. Chad Day. 2004. The role of collaboration in environmental management: an evaluation of land and resource planning in British Columbia. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 47:59-82.

Gagnon Thompson, Suzanne C., and Michelle A. Barton. 1994. Ecocentric and anthropocentric attitudes toward the environment. Journal of Environmental Psychology 14:149-157.

Gamba, Raymond J., and Stuart Oskamp. 1994. Factors influencing community residential participation in commingled curbside recycling programs. Environment and Behavior 26:587-612.

Geller, E. Scott. 1995. Actively caring for the environment: An integration of behaviorism and humanism. Environment and Behavior 27:184-195.

Goetz, Edward G. 2008. Words matter: The importance of issue framing and the case of affordable housing. Journal of the American Planning Association 74:222-229.

Graham, Jesse, Jonathan Haidt, Spassena Koleva, Matt Motyl, Ravi Iyer, Sean P. Wojcik, and Peter H. Ditto. 2013. Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 47:55-130.

Graham, Jesse, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek. 2009. Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96:1029-1046.

Graham, Jesse, Brian A. Nosek, Jonathan Haidt, Ravi Iyer, Spassena Koleva, and Peter H. Ditto. 2011. Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101:366-385.

Grant, Jill L. 2009. Experiential planning: A practitioner’s account of Vancouver’s success. Journal of the American Planning Association 75:358-370.

Gregory, Robin. 2000. Using stakeholder values to make smarter environmental decisions. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 42(5): 34-44.

Gregory, Robin, Timothy L. McDaniels, and Daryl Fields. 2001. Decision aiding, not dispute resolution: Creating insights through structured environmental decisions. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 20:415-432.

Gromet, Dena M., Howard Kunreuther, and Richard P. Larrick. 2013. Political ideology affects energy-efficiency attitudes and choices. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110:9314-9319.

Gualini, Enrico, and Stan J. H. Majoor. (2007). Innovative practices in large urban development projects: Conflicting frames in the quest for ‘new urbanity’. Planning Theory and Practice 8:297-318.

Gunton, Thomas I., and J. Chad Day 2003. The theory and practice of collaborative planning in resource and environmental management. Environments: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 31(2): 5-19.

Haidt, Jonathan. 2008. Morality. Perspectives on Psychology Science 3:65-72.

Haidt, Jonathan, and Jesse Graham. 2007. When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research 20:98-116.

Haidt, Jonathan, Jesse Graham, and Craig Joseph. 2009. Above and below left-right: Ideological narratives and moral foundations. Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory 20: 110-119.

Halford, Graeme, and Peter W. Sheehan. 1991. Human response to environmental changes. International Journal of Psychology 26:599-611.

Hanna, Kevin S. 2000. The paradox of participation and the hidden role of information: A case study. Journal of the American Planning Association 66:398-410.

Hawkins, Christopher V., and Xiao Hu Wang. 2012. Sustainable development governance: Citizen participation and support networks in local sustainability initiatives. Public Works Management Policy 17:7-29.

Healey, Patsy. 1996. The communicative turn in planning theory and its implications for spatial strategy formations. Environment and Planning B 23:217-234.

Healey, Patsy. 2003. Collaborative planning in perspective. Planning Theory 2:101-123.

Healey, Patsy. 2004. The treatment of space and place in the new strategic spatial planning in Europe. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28:45-67.

Hensler, Deborah R. 2003. Our courts, ourselves: How the alternative dispute resolution movement is re-shaping our legal system. Pennsylvania State Law Review 108:165-197. Accessed May 2, 2013. http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2005/RP1090.pdf.

Hines, Jody M., Harold R. Hungerford, and Audrey N. Tomera. 1986-1987. Analysis and synthesis of research on responsible pro-environmental behaviour: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Education, 18, 2: 1-8.

Hitlin, Steven, and Jane Allyn Piliavin. 2004. Values: Reviving a dormant concept. Annual Review of Sociology 30:359-393.

Illsleya, David, and Tim Richardson. 2004. New national parks for Scotland: Coalitions in conflict over the allocation of planning powers in the Cairngorms. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 47(2): 219-242.

Innes, Judith E. 1995. Planning theory’s emerging paradigm: Communicative action and interactive practice. Journal of Planning Education and Research 14:183-191.

Innes, Judith E. 1996. Planning through consensus building: A new view of the comprehensive planning ideal. Journal of American Planning Association 62:460-72.

Innes, Judith E. 2004. Consensus building: Clarifications for the critics. Planning Theory 3:5-20.

Innes, Judith E., and David E. Booher. 2004. Reframing public participation: Strategies for the 21st Century. Planning Theory and Practice 5:419-436.

Jensen, Michael C. 1994. Self-interest, altruism, incentives, and agency theory. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 7(2): 40-45.

Jensen, Ole B., and Tim Richardson. (2003). Being on the map: The new iconographies of power over European space. International Planning Studies 8:9-34.

Kahan, Dan M. 2013. Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection: An experimental study. Judgment and Decision Making 8:407-424.

Kahan, Dan M., Maggie M. Wittlin, Ellen Peters, Paul Slovic, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Donald Braman, and Gregory N. Mandel, 2012. The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change 2:732-735.

Kahn, Matthew E., and Eric A. Morris. 2009. Walking the walk: The association between community environmentalism and green travel behavior. Journal of the American Planning Association 75, 389-405.

Kaplan, Stephen. 1990. Being needed, adaptive muddling and human-environment relationships. In Coming of age: Proceedings of the Environmental Design Research Association Conference, edited by R. I. Selby, Kathryn H. Anthony, Jean Choi, and Brian Orland, 19-25. Oklahoma City, OK: Environmental Design Research Association. Accessed June 26, 2013. http://www.edra.org/sites/default/files/publications/EDRA21-Kaplan-19-25.pdf.

Kaplan, Stephen. 2000. Human nature and environmentally responsible behavior. Journal of Social Issues 56:491-508.

Karl, Herman A., Lawrence E. Susskind, and Katherine H. Wallace. 2007. A dialogue, not a diatribe: Effective integration of science and policy through joint fact finding. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 49:20-34.

Karp, David G. 1996. Values and their effects on pro-environmental behavior. Environment and Behavior 28:111-133.

Kaufman, Sanda, Robert Gardner, and Guy Burgess. 2003. Just the facts, please: Framing and technical information. Environmental Practice 5:223-231.

Kaufman, Sanda, and Barbara Gray. 2003. Using retrospective and prospective frame elicitation to evaluate environmental disputes. In The promise and performance of environmental conflict resolution, edited by Lisa B. Bingham and Rosemary O’Leary, 129-147. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.

Kaufman, Sanda, and Janet Smith. (1999). Framing and reframing in land use change conflicts. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16:164-180.

Kennedy, Emily Huddart, Thomas M. Beckley, Bonita L. McFarlane, and Solange Nadeau, 2009. Why we don’t “walk the talk”: Understanding the environmental values/behaviour gap in Canada. Human Ecology Review 16:151-160.

Kolb, Deborah M., and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, 1991. Mediation from a disciplinary perspective. In Handbook of negotiation research. Vol. 3, Research on negotiation in organizations, edited by Max H. Bazerman, Roy J. Lewicki, and Blair H. Sheppard. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Kollmuss, Anja, and Julian Agyeman. 2002. Mind the gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research 8:239-260.

Kurz, Tim. 2002. The psychology of environmentally sustainable behavior: Fitting together pieces of the puzzle. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 2:257-278.

Lewicki, Roy J., Stephen E. Weiss, and David Lewin. 1992. Models of conflict, negotiation and third party intervention: A review and synthesis. Journal of Organizational Behavior 13:209-252.

Lewicki, Roy J., Barbara Gray, and Michael Elliott, eds. 2003. Making sense of intractable environmental conflicts: Concepts and cases. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Lewis, Paul G., and Mark Baldassare. 2010. The complexity of public attitudes toward compact development: Survey evidence from five states. Journal of the American Planning Association 76:219-237.

Lindenberg, Siegwart, and Linda Steg. 2007. Normative, gain and hedonic goal frames guiding environmental behavior. Journal of Social Issues 63:117-137.

Lindseth, Gard. (2004). The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign (CCPC) and the framing of local climate policy. Local Environment 9:325-336.

Loroz, Peggy S. 2007. The interaction of message frames and reference points in prosocial persuasive appeals. Psychology and Marketing 24:1001-1023.

Majoor, Stan J. H. (2011). Framing large-scale projects: Barcelona forum and the challenge of balancing local and global needs. Journal of Planning Education and Research 31:143-156.

Malczewski, Jacek, Micja Pazner, and Malgodzata Zaliwska. (1997). GIS-based techniques for visualizing multicriteria location analysis: a case study. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems 24:80-90.

Mansbridge, Jane J. 1990. Beyond self-interest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Markowitz, Ezra M., Lewis R. Goldberg, Michael C. Ashton, and Kibeom Lee. 2012. Profiling the “pro-environmental individual”: A personality perspective. Journal of Personality 80:81-111.

McAdams, Dan, Michelle Albaugh, Emily Farber, Jennifer Daniels, Regina Logan, and Brad Olson, 2008. Family metaphors and moral intuitions: How conservatives and liberals narrate their lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95:978-990.

McCann, Eugene J. (2003). Framing space and time in the city: Urban policy and the politics of spatial and temporal scale. Journal of Urban Affairs, 25: 159-178.

McCright, Aaron M., and Riley E. Dunlap. 2011. The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public’s views of global warming, 2001-2010. The Sociological Quarterly 52:155-194.

McEvoy, Darryn, Hartmut Fünfgeld, and Karyn Bosomworth. 2013. Resilience and climate change adaptation: The importance of framing. Planning Practice and Research 28:280-293.

McDaniels, Timothy L., and Robin Gregory. 2004. Learning as an objective within a structured risk management decision process. Environmental Science and Technology 38:1921-1926.

McKenzie-Mohr, Doug. 2000a. Promoting sustainable behavior: An introduction to community-based social marketing. Journal of Social Issues 56:543-554.

McKenzie-Mohr, Doug. 2000b. Fostering sustainable behavior through community-based social marketing. American Psychologist 55:531-537.

Meinhold, Jana L., and Amy J. Malkus. 2005. Adolescent environmental behaviors: Can knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy make a difference? Environment and Behavior 37:511-532.

Merrick, Jason R. W., and Margot W. Garcia. 2004. Using value-focused thinking to improve watersheds. Journal of the American Planning Association 70:313-327.

Moisander, Johanna. 2007. Motivational complexity of green consumerism. International Journal of Consumer Studies 31:404-409.

Norton, Bryan G., and Anne C. Steinemann. 2001 Environmental values and adaptive management. Environmental Values 10:473-506.

Omoto, Allen M., and Mark Snyder. 1995. Sustained helping without obligation: Motivation, longevity of service, and perceived attitude change among AIDS volunteers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68:671-686.

O’Riordan, Timothy. 2005. Inclusive and community participation in the coastal zone: opportunities and dangers. In Managing European coasts: Past, present and future, edited by Jan E. Vermaat, Wim Salomons, Laurens Bouwer, and Kerry Turner, 173-184. Berlin: Springer.

Pelletier, Luc G., and Elizabeth Sharp. 2008. Persuasive communication and proenvironmental behaviours: How message tailoring and message framing can improve the integration of behaviours through self-determined motivation. Canadian Psychology 49:210-217.

Poortinga, Wouter, Linda Steg, and Charles Vlek. 2004. Values, environmental concern, and environmental behavior: A study into household energy use. Environment and Behavior 36:70-93.

Pruitt, Dean G. 1995. Process and outcome in community mediation. Negotiation Journal 11:365-377.

Pruitt, Dean G., Robert S. Pierce, Josephine M. Zubek, Neal B. McGillicuddy, and Gary L. Welton. 1993. Determinants of short-term and long-term success in mediation. In Conflict between people and groups: Causes, processes, and resolutions, edited by Stephen Worchel and Jeffrey A. Simpson, 60-73. Chicago: Nelson Hall, Inc.

Reed, Patrick, and Gregory G. Brown. 2003. Values suitability analysis: A methodology for identifying and integrating public perceptions of ecosystem values in forest planning. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 46: 643-658.

Renn, Ortwin. 1999. A model for an analytic-deliberate process in risk management. Environmental Science and Technology 33:3049-3055

Rokeach, Milton. 1968. Beliefs, attitudes and values: A theory of organization and change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rokeach, Milton. 1971. Long-range experimental modification of values, attitudes, and behavior. American Psychologist 26:453-459.

Rokeach, Milton. 1973. The nature of human values. New York: John Wiley.

Rokeach, Milton, and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach. 1989. Stability and change in American value priorities, 1968-1981. American Psychologist 44:775-784.

Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. 2000. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist 55:68-78.

Salet, Willem. (2008). Rethinking urban projects: Experiences in Europe. Urban Studies 45:2343-2363.

Schon, Donald A., and Martin Rein. 1995. Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. New York: Basic Books.

Schultz, P. Wesley. 2002. Environmental attitudes and behaviors across cultures. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture 8(1). Accessed June 12, 2013. http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol8/iss1/4/.

Schultz, P. Wesley, and Lynnette Zelezny. 2003. Reframing environmental measures to be congruent with American values. Human Ecology Review 10:126-136.

Schwartz, Shalom H. 1992. Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. 25, edited by Mark P. Zanna, 1-65. New York: Academic Press.

Schwartz, Shalom H. 1994a. Beyond individualism/collectivism: New cultural dimensions of values. In Individualism and collectivism: Theory, method, and applications; Cross-cultural research and methodology series, vol. 18 edited by Uichol Kim, Harry C. Triandis, Çigdem Kâğitçibaşi, Sang-Chin Choi, and Gene Yoon, 85-119. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schwartz, S. H. (1994b). Are there universal aspects in the structure and contents of human values? Journal of Social Issues 50: 19-45.

Schwartz, Shalom H., and Wolfgang Bilsky. 1987. Toward a universal psychological structure of human values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53:550-562.

Shandas, Vivek, and W. Barry Messer. 2008. “Fostering green communities through civic engagement: Community-based environmental stewardship in the Portland area.” Journal of the American Planning Association 74:408-418.

Shmueli, Deborah F. 2008. Framing in geographical analysis of environmental conflicts: Theory, methodology and three case studies. Geoforum 39:2048-2061. Accessed June 21, 2013. http://132.68.226.240/english/pdf/Professors/Devorah_Shmueli/9.pdf.

Shmueli, Deborah, Michael Elliott, and Sanda Kaufman. (2006). Frame changes and the management of intractable conflicts. Conflict Resolution Quarterly 24:207-218.

Shove, Elizabeth. 2010. Beyond the ABC: Climate change policy and theories of social change. Environment and Planning A 42:1273-1285.

Snyder, Mark, and Allen M. Omoto. 1991. Who helps and why: The psychology of AIDS volunteerism. In Helping and being helped: Naturalistic studies, edited by Shirlynn Spacapan and Stuart Oskamp, 213-239. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Steg, Linda, Lieke Dreijerink, and Wokje Abrahamse. 2005. Factors influencing the acceptability of energy policies: A test of VBN theory. Journal of Environmental Psychology 25:415-425.

Steg, Linda, Judith I. M. de Groot, Lieke Dreijerink, Wokje Abrahamse, and Frans Siero. 2011. General antecedents of personal norms, policy acceptability, and intentions: The role of values, worldviews, and environmental concern. Society and Natural Resources: An International Journal 24:349-367.

Stern, Paul C. 2000. Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues 56:407-424.

Stern, Paul C., and Thomas Dietz. 1994. The value basis of environmental concern. Journal of Social Issues 50:65-84.

Stern, Paul C., Thomas Dietz, Troy Abel, Gregory A. Guagnano, and Linda Kalof. 1999. A value-belief-norm theory of support for social movements: The case of environmental concern. Human Ecology Review 6:81-97.

Stern, Paul C., Thomas Dietz, and Linda Kalof. 1993. Value orientations, gender, and environmental concern. Environment and Behavior 25:322-348.

Stern, Paul C., Linda Kalof, Thomas Dietz, and Gregory A. Guagnano. 1995. Values, beliefs, and proenvironmental action: Attitude formation toward emergent attitude objects. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 25:1611-1636.

Struch, Naomi, and Shalom H. Schwartz. 1989. Intergroup aggression: Its predictors and distinctness from in-group bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56:364-373.

Susskind, Lawrence E. 2009. Deliberative democracy and dispute resolution. Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 24:395-406. Accessed July 1, 2013. http://cbuilding.org/sites/cbuilding.org/files/OHIO_JDR_Deliberative.Democracy.pdf.

Susskind, Lawrence E., and Herman A. Karl. 2009. Balancing science and politics in environmental decision-making: A new role for science impact coordinators. Science Impact Collaborative Paper. Accessed July 1, 2013. http://www.academia.edu/2801306/Balancing_Science_and_Politics_in_Environmental_Decision-Making_A_New_Role_for_Science_Impact_Coordinators.

Susskind, Lawrence E., and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank. 2006. Breaking Robert’s rules: The new way to run your meeting, build consensus, and get results. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Susskind, Lawrence E., and Alan Weinstein. 1980. Towards a theory of environmental dispute resolution. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 9:311-357.

Susskind, Lawrence E., Mieke van der Wansem, and Armand Ciccarelli. 2000. Mediating land use disputes: Pros and cons. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Taber, Charles S., and Milton Lodge. 2006. Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science 50:755-769.

Taylor, Dorcetta E. (2000). The rise of the environmental justice paradigm: Injustice framing and the social construction of environmental discourses. American Behavioral Scientist 43:508-580.

Triandis, Harry C. 1996. The psychological measurement of cultural syndromes. American Psychologist 51:407-415.

Turner, Ralph H. 1991. The use and misuse of rational models in collective behavior and social psychology. European Journal of Sociology 32:84-108.

Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1981. The framing of decisions and the rationality of choice. Science 221:453-458.

Weber, Elke U., and Paul C. Stern. 2011. Public understanding of climate change in the United States. American Psychologist 66:315-328.

Wondolleck, Julia M., and Steven L. Yaffee. 2000. Making collaboration work: Lessons from innovations in natural resource management. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Endnotes

---

[1] Also known in the literature as Environmentally Responsible Behavior and Environmentally Sustainable Behavior.

[2] The term indicates decision-making agents in situations characterized by emotions, various types of uncertainty, and time and knowledge constraints. Non-rational behavior must not be confused with irrational behavior.

[3] Which De Young termed Environmentally Responsible Behavior or ERB.

[4] Following norms and established processes is also a self-interest orientation.

[5] Empirical research by Alibeli and White (2011) and de Groot and Steg (2008) demonstrated that the three value-based concerns are independent of each other and distinctions among them are statistically reliable and valid.

[6] See http://wilderness.org/why

[7] See http://www.sierraclub.org/

[8] See http://www.sierraclub.org/ej/default.aspx

[9] See http://www.nwf.org/

[10] See http://worldwildlife.org/initiatives

[11] See http://www.edf.org/what-we-do

[12] See http://www.audubon.org/about-us

[13] See http://worldwildlife.org/species