The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Bringing Identity Theory into Environmental Sociology
Abstract
In an effort to explain pro-environmental behavior, environmental sociologists often study environmental attitudes. While much of this work is atheoretical, the focus on attitudes suggests that researchers are implicitly drawing upon attitude theory in psychology. The present research brings sociological theory to environmental sociology by drawing on identity theory to understand environmentally responsive behavior. We develop an environment identity model of environmental behavior that includes not only the meanings of the environment identity, but also the prominence and salience of the environment identity and commitment to the environment identity. We examine the identity process as it relates to behavior, though not to the exclusion of examining the effects of environmental attitudes. The findings reveal that individual agency is important in influencing environmentally responsive behavior, but this agency is largely through identity processes, rather than attitude processes. This provides an important theoretical and empirical advance over earlier work in environmental sociology.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
New Environmental Theories: Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior
Stern, P. C. (2000) · Journal of Social Issues · doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00175 · Cited by 8,682
Dunlap, R. E., Van Liere, K. D., Mertig, A. G., & Jones, R. E. (2000) · Journal of Social Issues · doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00176 · Cited by 5,678
Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory
Stets, J. E., & Burke, P. J. (2000) · Social Psychology Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2695870 · Cited by 4,464
Self-citationThe “new environmental paradigm”
Dunlap, R. E., & Van Liere, K. D. (1978) · The Journal of Environmental Education · doi:10.1080/00958964.1978.10801875 · Cited by 2,833
Value orientations, gender and environmental concern
Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., & Kalof, L. (1993) · Environment and Behavior · doi:10.1177/0013916593255002 · Cited by 2,162
Influences on Attitude-Behavior Relationships: A Natural Experiment with Curbside Recycling
Guagnano, G. A., Stern, P. C., & Dietz, T. (1995) · Environment and Behavior · doi:10.1177/0013916595275005 · Cited by 1,457
Predicting dishonest actions using the theory of planned behavior
Beck, L., & Ajzen, I. (1991) · Journal of Research in Personality · doi:10.1016/0092-6566(91)90021-h · Cited by 1,325
Sex Differences in Social Behavior
Pasterski, V., Golombok, S., & Hines, M. (2010) · The Wiley‐Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development · doi:10.1002/9781444390933.ch15 · Cited by 107
Cited by
Whitmarsh, L., & O'Neill, S. (2010) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.01.003 · Cited by 1,765
Biophilia as Evolutionary Adaptation: An Onto- and Phylogenetic Framework for Biophilic Design
Barbiero, G., & Berto, R. (2021) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700709 · Cited by 188
Qasim, H., Yan, L., Guo, R., Saeed, A., & Ashraf, B. N. (2019) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph16071106 · Cited by 177
“By integrating the theory of consumption values [43], and self-identity approach to sustainable behavior [44], this study aims to find the relation between consumption values and consumers’ behavior intention to consume organic food with an intervening role of general environmental self-identity between consumption va…”
BackgroundResultInfluentialRole of Green Self-Identity and Peer Influence in Fostering Trust towards Organic Food Retailers
Khare, A., & Pandey, S. (2017) · International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management · doi:10.1108/ijrdm-07-2016-0109 · Cited by 140
Higueras-Castillo, E., Liébana-Cabanillas, F. J., Muñoz-Leiva, F., & García-Maroto, I. (2019) · Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services · doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.07.006 · Cited by 129
Metadata
- Authors
- Stets, J. E., & Biga, C. F.
- Venue
- Sociological Theory
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2003-12
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 398-423
- ISSN
- 0735-2751 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9558
- OpenAlex
- W2089671457
- Cited by
- 490
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 9.05
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Bringing Identity Theory into Environmental Sociology. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1046/j.1467-9558.2003.00196.x
- The paper
- Stets, J. E., & Biga, C. F. (2003). Bringing Identity Theory into Environmental Sociology. Sociological Theory. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-9558.2003.00196.x
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
