We, the Change
Outlining Research Lines of How Psychology Can Contribute to the Understanding of Societal Transition Processes
Abstract
Abstract. In the last years within sustainability research, the agreement seems to have changed about the appropriate strategies to solve the intensifying socio-ecological crisis. While the focus used to be on “greening” individual lifestyles, it has recently shifted to the fundamental transition of central societal production and consumption systems. This raises the question of what psychology with its traditional focus on the individual can contribute to a better understanding and successful design of such societal transition processes. The present paper aims to offer an outline of how such psychological research lines might look like. We use the social identity concept as a starting point and motivate it as central for understanding the transformation of an individual into a group member who voluntarily collaborates with others to create more sustainable socio-technical solutions for central societal needs. The three parts of our paper deliver compact descriptions of thought-provoking research lines which developed in the last years. These research lines contribute to a better understanding of how social identities as collective pro-environmental activists are “crafted,” through which processes such as activist identities influence the participation in collective pro-environmental action and, ultimately, collective change. In sum, an important psychological contribution to the debate about the “Great Transformation” could be to provide a better understanding of what motivates individuals to actively participate in transition-oriented initiatives and how this motivation can be strengthened.
In the last decades, research in environmental psychology has mainly focussed on psychological factors that underlie individuals’ decisions to behave in a more or less “green” way. Implicitly, this approach assumes that the current socio-ecological crisis reflects the sum of billions of wrong individual behavioral decisions. It consequently views the solution to the crisis in scientifically-based information campaigns and individual behavior change programs (e.g., Corner & Randall, 2011; Kaiser et al., 1999). The limited success of such programs and the ongoing intensification of the socio-ecological crisis, despite peoples’ growing environmental awareness, have challenged the faith in the effectiveness of this individualistic approach (e.g., Corner & Randall, 2011; Shove, 2010). It has been argued that the current line of thought – that the socio-ecological crisis is mainly a problem of individual behavior – is too narrow and leaves out relevant influence factors to mitigate the crisis. One solution to broaden the focus of environmental psychological research and to overcome its blind spots is to delve more into the field of interdisciplinary sustainability research on the origin and solution of the socio-ecological crisis (e.g., Fischhoff, 2020).
Interdisciplinary sustainability research (e.g., Loorbach et al., 2017; Ockwell et al., 2009; Uzzell & Räthzel, 2009) encourages to take into account the multiple levels that are necessary to cope with the task of mitigating the socio-ecological crisis. Not only individuals but national and global politics, cultural patterns, and macroeconomics all influence the production and consumption systems that determine our daily life. Thus, the socio-ecological crisis is a societal problem that results from the nature of unsustainable production and consumption systems and not simply from isolated individual decisions. According to this understanding, people’s intention and behavioral efforts are a product of the unsustainable systems around them (Schmitt et al. 2019; Uzzell & Räthzel, 2009). Thus, addressing the socio-ecological crisis requires a fundamental transition of these central systems, for example, in the domains of mobility, energy, and food production (Loorbach et al., 2017). Overcoming unsustainable production and consumption systems, in other words, is a societal task, not an individualistic one.
As a consequence of changing the conceptual focus from the individual decision to production and consumption systems as a whole, environmental psychology is challenged to redefine its contribution to this discourse (Wallis et al., 2021). To integrate future research, this reflection needs a theoretical framework with an explicit focus on societal transformations. The next sections, therefore, present the multilevel perspective put forward by Geels (2002, 2012, 2018) as a theoretical approach to societal transformation.
The Multilevel Perspective on Societal Transformation as Theoretical Framework
The multilevel perspective (MLP; Geels, 2002, 2012, 2018) argues that social change happens through the transformation of production and consumption systems or socio-technical systems. With this term, Geels (2002) describes the intricate relation between technology, production capacities, supply networks, infrastructure, maintenance networks, legal regulation, cultural meaning, user practices, and markets. The MLP analyses transformations of socio-technical systems on three levels on which these processes interact. First, the landscape level (macro-level) characterizes exogenous developments such as changes in deeply rooted cultural patterns, macro politics, or natural disasters. Climate change, economic crises, political upheaval, or natural disasters (e.g., floods or droughts) can all be conceptualized as exogenous developments. Second, the regime level (meso-level) describes the present production and consumption systems with their inherent rules, institutions, and technologies. The regime is dynamically stable along a predictable trajectory resulting in resistance against potentially system-changing technological and social innovations, for example, toward sustainability. Third, the niche level (micro-level) is the “locus for radical innovations” (Geels, 2005, p. 684). The niche with its influence on markets and regulations can promote innovations that are radically different from the prevailing regime.
Transformation, according to the MLP, emerges from “co-evolving” processes on the three levels (Geels, 2002): First, niche innovations build up momentum through learning processes, price and performance improvements, and support from influential groups. This facilitates developments at the landscape level. Second, these developments at the landscape level exert pressure at the regime level and open windows of opportunities for change. Third, the destabilized regime then creates windows of opportunities for the niche innovation to breakthrough. When processes at the three levels align, niche innovations can have a breakthrough in the mainstream market and start to compete with existing solutions.
Seyfang and Longhurst (2016) transferred the concept of innovations at the niche level to the context of civil society: Networks of activists and organizations that form grassroots movements can create radical innovations, too. According to Seyfang and Longhurst (2016), grassroots initiatives have the potential for sustainable innovations powerful enough for radical sustainable transformation of societal systems. These bottom-up innovations sustainably and efficiently meet the demand for needs, for instance for energy production (Ockwell et al., 2009; Rouser-Renouf et al., 2014). The German Energiewende (energy transition) as one prominent case in point started with niche actors that advanced innovative technology for solar and wind power. The development of efficient, large-scale technology (niche level) and the socio-ecological crisis (landscape level) exerted pressure on the current energy supplies (regime level). As a consequence, new institutions were founded and regulations that supported the transformation toward sustainable energy production were put in place.
Connecting the Niche Level of the MLP With Environmental Psychological Research
From a psychological perspective, participation in innovative grassroots initiatives is a prototypical example of collective action as “[…] action undertaken by individuals as psychological group members to achieve group goals in a political context” (Van Zomeren, 2016, p. 89). Psychological research on collective action (e.g., Schulte et al. 2020; Van Zomeren et al., 2008) reliably established a set of predictors for becoming a pro-environmental activist or, in MLP terms, for actively working toward a sustainable transformation of socio-technical systems. This research highlighted social identity as a key concept for understanding collective pro-environmental action. Social identity is defined as the “part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1978, p. 63). As a result, group members think of themselves in relation to other group members. For highly identified group members, the “We” (social identity) guides motives and actions more than the “I” (personal identity). Of course, group members still make individual decisions but based on motives and actions that are influenced by their group membership.
Three Proposed Research Lines
Integrating social identity into the niche level of the MLP allows us to embed environmental psychological research into a greater societal perspective on the transformation of socio-technical systems (Schulte et al., 2020). Thus, understanding the motives leading individuals to identify with and join grassroots initiatives may provide unique research lines for transition-oriented environmental psychology.
We, therefore, decided to focus our work on innovative grassroots initiatives theoretically connecting environmental psychological research with the psychological research on group processes and social identity on the one hand (e.g., Stürmer & Simon, 2009; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and social-scientific research on social movements on the other (e.g., Klandermans, 1997). The next section investigates if and how an integrative model from the social movement and collective protest domains can also be applied to the domain of collective pro-environmental action. More specifically, we focus on the processes underlying the interactive “crafting” of activist identities through group processes. For this purpose, we outline a theoretical model to understand the dynamic relationships between key concepts within interactive group processes. Based on recent empirical findings, we discuss how group-based communication and negotiation processes may lead to the creation of group norms on prototypical emotions that pro-environmental activists should experience, which beliefs they should endorse, and how they should behave. We examine the process of joining and being involved in collective action in grassroots initiatives and describe how research on social identification has changed our understanding of the dynamic nature of these processes and the mechanisms through which identification may influence collective action. We show that social identity is a strong predictor of the intention to collaborate in the organization of a citizen-initiated cycling referendum and also find empirical evidence that the development of such an identity is based on outrage caused by the perceived violation of moral principles. The last part of the paper presents our conclusions from the proposed research lines also summarising how they could hopefully inspire innovative future research in environmental psychology.
Research Line 1: The Social Identity Model of Collective Action as an Integrative Framework for Collective Pro-Environmental Action
Theoretical Perspective
Research Line 1 draws on social movement and collective action research and transfers an integrative model to collective pro-environmental action. Collective pro-environmental action can be defined as behaviors of individuals as members of pro-environmental action groups facilitating the public engagement for the sustainable transition of socio-technical systems (Rees & Bamberg, 2014). The question is why people should join such collective pro-environmental action, for example, an innovative grassroots initiative. Social movement and collective action research have identified three constructs that reliably predict the intention for collective action. The first and most influential predictor for collective action is social identification. There is strong empirical evidence that the identification with a certain group is linked with the intention for or actual participation in collective action on behalf of that group (Bamberg et al., 2018; McGarty et al., 2009; Stürmer & Simon, 2004; Van Zomeren et al., 2008). The second predictor for collective action intention is group-based moral emotions, especially outrage, reflecting a group-based appraisal of a given situation (Stürmer & Simon, 2004; Van Zomeren et al., 2004, 2008). For example, when a group perceives a situation as unjust, group-based emotions like anger or outrage can motivate the group to confront this injustice. The third predictor for participation in collective action is collective efficacy perceptions. They can be defined as the individual’s expectation about what the group can achieve with joint efforts (Bandura, 1997; Mummendey et al., 1999). In other words, when I cannot change a given societal situation myself, together, we may be more likely to achieve the change than one person alone.
The Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA; Van Zomeren et al., 2008 for a review; Van Zomeren et al., 2011) integrates the three constructs of social identity, group-based emotions, and collective efficacy into one framework and simultaneously clarifies the relationships among them (see Figure 1). The SIMCA proposes a central role for social identification as a key predictor for collective action and the other two constructs. In this way, social identification can be seen to motivate action directly as well as indirectly via the experience of emotions and efficacy. Within the domain of social movement and collective action research, the meta-analysis by Van Zomeren and colleagues (2008) provides evidence that correlational data fit the structure postulated by the SIMCA. However, for the domain of collective pro-environmental action the respective evidence is still scarce (e.g., Bamberg et al., 2015; Rees & Bamberg, 2014).
Empirical Evidence
For a multivariate test of the SIMCA in the context of collective pro-environmental action, we generated a meta-analytically pooled correlation matrix of the four SIMCA constructs presented in Table 1. The pooled correlations were calculated based on the primary correlations of the SIMCA variables for nine studies (see Schulte et al., 2020, Table 1). Furthermore, we included data from two additional papers (Bongiorno et al., 2016; Van Zomeren et al., 2019) that also reported primary correlations of SIMCA variables for six samples (see Table A1 in Appendix for all means, standard deviations, and primary correlations). Inclusion criteria were that firstly, social identity was assessed based on an opinion-group via the categories “environmental movement” or “pro-environmental activists” and secondly, the dependent variable was the intention to participate or actual participation in collective pro-environmental action. We then used the meta-analytically pooled correlation matrix of the four SIMCA constructs presented in Table 1 as input for a meta-analytic structural equation model (MASEM; Bamberg & Möser, 2007; Becker, 2000; Viswesvaran & Ones, 1995). This method allows to specify and to test multivariate path models based on meta-analytically pooled correlation matrices.
Figure 1 presents the results of a path model estimating the five structural relations between the four constructs social identity, group-based emotions, collective efficacy, and behavioral intention postulated by the SIMCA. The fit of the specified model was very good (χ2 = 0.08; df =1; p = .78, RMSEA < .001, CFI = 1.00).
As postulated by the SIMCA, social identity was a significant predictor of group-based emotions, and collective efficacy: Social identity explained 12% of the variance in group-based emotions and 23% of the variance in collective efficacy. With a path coefficient of β = .53, social identity was also the most powerful predictor of behavioral intention. Together with social identity, group-based emotions, and collective efficacy explained 41% of the variance in behavioral intention.
The MASEM results support the crucial role of social identity in predicting the intention to participate in collective pro-environmental action: Besides its strong direct association with participation intention, social identity was also indirectly associated with participation intention via its association with group-based emotions (β = .34) and collective efficacy (β = .48).
Lessons Learned and Implications for Potential Interventions for Promoting Participation in Collective Pro-Environmental Action
From our point of view, empirically supported integrative models like the SIMCA are important for developing research on the psychological determinants of collective pro-environmental action. The results of the meta-analysis show that the SIMCA can provide such an integrative model for collective pro-environmental action and confirm that social identity, collective efficacy, and group-based emotions are relevant predictors for the domain of collective pro-environmental action as well. Thus, all three predictors should be addressed in future research on collective pro-environmental action. Equally, interventions aiming to promote participation in such actions should address these variables. However, the present meta-analysis of the correlational data is a snapshot of the presumably dynamic process of becoming a pro-environmental activist. Thus, Research Line 2 proposes to investigate the role of the SIMCA predictors in the process of becoming an activist.
Research Line 2: The SIMCA Constructs – Independent Determinants or Dynamic Relationship System?
Theoretical Perspective
Our meta-analytical summary of SIMCA studies indicates a substantive association between the constructs group-based emotions, collective efficacy, social identification, and participation intention for collective pro-environmental action. What, however, is the theoretical meaning and practical significance of these correlational associations? Graphical representations of the SIMCA (see Figure 1) seem to suggest that these associations are separate, independent causal relations. From an applied perspective, such an interpretation would suggest social identity, emotions, and collective efficacy as separate and additive pathways to collective pro-environmental action. This would have an important practical implication: Researchers would have to focus on developing interventions independently targeting the three constructs.
For Thomas et al. (2009), however, viewing social identity, emotions, and collective efficacy as independent, separate determinants of collective action is too simple and static. For them, such a view does not take into account the dynamic relationship between the constructs. With their normative alignment model, Thomas et al. (2009) aim to provide a more realistic understanding of these dynamic relationships. The normative alignment model is based on the idea “that the solution to creating long-term commitment to social and political action lies in crafting an identity with a relevant pattern of norms for emotion, efficacy, and action” (p. 202). The model assumes that experiencing, for example, moral outrage motivates a person to search social contexts which offer the opportunity to socially validate the correctness of this emotion. Thomas et al. (2009) further assume that through processes of communication, negotiation, and consensualization, people develop norms defining “who we are and how we think, feel and act” that are defining an activist identity. Importantly, for the normative alignment to produce a long-term commitment to collective action, the emotions and beliefs not only need to be congruent with the emergent social identity but also the content elements themselves need to be congruent with each other. This leads to a conceptualization of normative alignment as a dynamic system of interrelations in the context of a salient social identity. Thus, this view implies that a shift in one of the elements is likely to cause a reorientation in the others, too. Put differently, to the extent to which individuals perceive outrage, collective efficacy, and collective action to be norms of a group with which they identify, they should simultaneously experience those emotions, endorse those beliefs, and commit to those behaviors.
Accepting the view that a sustainable long-term commitment to collective action is based on a pattern of congruent normative alignments, leads to the question of how these alignments are created. Postmes and colleagues’ interactive model of identity formation (Postmes, Haslam, et al., 2005; Postmes, Spears, et al., 2005) suggests that social identities are created via the interplay of two psychological routes: (1) A deductive route, whereby the identity and associated norms are deduced from various social-structural information about what the group and its broader social function are; (2) an inductive route, whereby the members of the group develop norms through a process of communication, negotiation, and consensualization about what it means to be an ingroup member. It follows that group norms emerge through ingroup communication from which the group derives and accommodates with a group prototype (Postmes, Haslam, et al., 2005).
Empirical Evidence
We tested two hypotheses derived from the normative alignment model:
The successful “crafting” of a new social identity through communication processes should be reflected in quantitative shifts of the mean levels of the constructs group-based outrage, collective efficacy, social identification, and participation intention.
The crafting of a new social identity is characterized by a stronger alignment of the identity elements.
Empirically, the latter should be reflected in stronger empirical intercorrelations among the elements. One member of our group (Küting, 2020) collected data during information meetings of an activist group for recruiting new activists organizing a local citizen-initiated cycling referendum. The cycling referendum aimed to put political pressure on the local government to redistribute communal resources from car-oriented infrastructure measures to measures improving the local cycling infrastructure. Thus, the decision to collaborate actively in such a group represents not only a prototypical example of a transformative political engagement but also the psychological phenomenon we are interested in: The crafting of a social identity as an activist.
The three information meetings organized by the activist group lasted about 2 hr and had a similar structure: They began with a video clip presenting the attractive cycling infrastructure in the Dutch city of Groningen as a visionary goal. Then the idea, aims, and organizational state of the planned local cycling referendum were presented. Examples of missing or bad local cycling infrastructure were used to illustrate the necessity of the local cycling referendum. For increasing participants’ collective efficacy beliefs, two successful popular bike votes (Berlin and Bamberg) were reported in detail. Next, participants discussed the presented information within groups of up to six persons and reported their reflections in the plenum. The meeting ended with a presentation of working groups that were needed for successfully organizing the local popular vote on cycling. Participants were asked to commit themselves to collaborate actively in one of these working groups.
Before and after the information meeting N = 56 participants completed a short questionnaire assessing the following SIMCA constructs: Emotional outrage (e.g., “When I think about what the local politicians are doing to make the city’s transportation system more people- and environment-friendly, I am outraged”), collective efficacy (e.g., “By acting together, we citizens can achieve the goal of organizing a local citizen-initiated popular vote for cycling”), social identification (e.g. “I identify with people who organize the local citizen-initiated popular vote for cycling”), and participation intention (e.g. “I intend to be actively involved in a group organizing a local citizen-initiated popular vote for cycling”).
After the information meetings, participants reported significantly stronger participation intention corresponding with a statistically significant increase in reported collective efficacy beliefs (see Table 2). Both findings support Hypothesis 1. We also observed a small increase in mean social identification and a small decrease in outrage that did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance. After the information meetings, we also found stronger intercorrelations of outrage and collective efficacy with social identification as well as between social identification and participation intention. Regression analyses of the pre and post-data indicated that only social identification was a significant predictor of participation intention (see Küting, 2020). However, for the post-data, this association was stronger (β = .64, p < .001) than for the pre-data (β = .45, p < .05), a finding providing empirical support for Hypothesis 2. Detailed mediation analyses (see Küting, 2020) indicated that the impact of collective efficacy on participation intention was fully mediated by social identification.
Lessons Learned and Implications for Potential Interventions for Promoting Participation in Collective Pro-Environmental Action
The results from this study support our hypotheses derived from the normative alignment model. The group discussion during the information meetings may have activated the inductive route of identity formation: The intensive communication, negotiation, and consensualization processes during the information meetings may have led to the creation of a group norm that prescribes what emotions a prototypical group member should experience, which beliefs they should endorse, and to what kind of behaviors they should commit. The commonly crafted activist identity around the cycling referendum may have been the reason, why participants, who strongly identified with the group, reported higher collective efficacy beliefs and a stronger participation intention. The finding that the identity components were intercorrelated more strongly after the meetings may reflect the normative alignment process that occurred during the meetings.
Our interpretation of the study results remains speculative because we did not directly assess the postulated processes of group norm formation and normative alignment which future work may find fruitful to address. However, our results provide preliminary evidence that the normative alignment model represents an important theoretical perspective to understand how social identities support a long-term commitment to collective pro-environmental action. As discussed above, this theoretical perspective also has implications for interventions: Instead of independently fostering group-based emotions, collective efficacy, and social identification, interventions should aim to establish interactive situations that facilitate the creation of group norms for collective pro-environmental action. Future research, thus, could study the opinion-based group interaction method by Thomas et al. (2009) that provides one promising example of such an intervention type.
The SIMCA theorizes that social identity is the core predictor for participation in collective pro-environmental action. Therefore, we propose to further investigate precursors and content of as well as changes within pro-environmental activist identities. Thus, the next research line focuses on the social identity of pro-environmental activists.
Research Line 3: Changes in the Understanding of Identification Processes: From Group Identity to Politicized Identity to Moralized Identity
Theoretical Perspective
As opposed to the psychological processes that lead to the formation of actual social identity, there is a rich body of literature on the role of an already formed social identity. The current understanding of social identification in collective action is developed in three phases. The focus of the first phase was on identifying with a group as a predictor of collective action. This idea originated in social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), arguing that individuals can perceive themselves as psychological group members and feel and act accordingly – instead of only having their individual, single perspective. The question of why people participated in collective action was mainly explained with the notion that people wanted to improve the (negative) status of their group. In a second phase, Simon and Klandermans (2001) specified that shared grievances can politicize social identities. Shared grievances can have different forms, for example perceiving illegitimate inequality, suddenly imposed grievances (e.g., accidents with major impact on the environment), or violated principles (Klandermans, 1997). Simon and Klandermans (2001) argued that group members’ realization of their shared grievances encourages politicisation. When an out-group is blamed for the grievances, a power struggle may begin. The members then collectively act on behalf of their (politicized) group and may seek the support of powerful third parties or the broader public. In sum, during the last years research has better understood how social identities emerge and how they motivate political actions.
In the meantime, research focused on how the emotionalization of shared grievances may come about: Moral convictions were introduced as an amplifier for collective action (Van Zomeren, 2016). Evidence showed that perceived violations of core values predicted identification (Kutlaca et al., 2019), and activists and non-activists were also motivated for future activism by perceived rights violation (Mazzoni et al., 2015). Thus, a moral dimension is also a motivator for collective action (Skitka & Bauman, 2008; Skitka et al., 2015; Van Zomeren et al., 2012) and leads to the understanding of politicized identity as moralized identity (Van Zomeren et al., 2018).
Empirical Evidence
We tested the hypotheses that (1) politicized pro-environmental identity correlates positively with the intention to participate in collective pro-environmental action and that (2) perceived moral violations correlate positively with politicized pro-environmental identity. An online survey was completed by 48 activists, who belonged to groups organizing local citizen-initiated cycling referendums and 24 participants who were infrequently active, for example with signing petitions for cycling referendums. Additionally, 34 participants were not actively involved in collective pro-environmental action. The questionnaire contained measures assessing the constructs of politicized identity (e.g., “I identify with people who support a cycling referendum in my city”), perceived moral violations (e.g., “The strongly car-oriented traffic policy violates my or my family’s right to safety, health and an intact environment”), and participation intention (e.g., “I intend to get actively involved in a group to prepare a cycling referendum”).
As expected, politicized pro-environmental identity correlated positively to participate in future collective actions and equally strongly with perceived moral violations (Table 3). These findings provide first empirical support that politicized and moralized identities are also important in the domain of collective pro-environmental action (Hypotheses 1 and 2).
Lessons Learned and Implications for Potential Interventions for Promoting Participation in Collective Pro-Environmental Action
We presented empirical evidence that perceived moral violations are linked with politicized identities as well as with intentions to participate in collective pro-environmental action. The investigation of perceived moral violations, therefore, promises insights into the process of the formation of pro-environmental activist’s identities. If supported by future research, this theoretical perspective may have important implications for future interventions. First, future interventions could point out the moral implications of the socio-ecological crisis to promote participation in collective pro-environmental action. More specifically, framing participation in collective pro-environmental action as a moral obligation could promote this behavior and in turn attract more people to join (e.g., Sabucedo et al., 2018). Second, grassroots initiatives could strategically target moral aspects to win the support of the broader public. Communicating that a powerful outgroup (e.g., the government) is violating moral principles might motivate non-activists to identify with the initiative more strongly. If people share the same moral principles, they might adapt their appraisal of the situation or begin “crafting” a new activist social identity. Such a motivating effect of the gap between the situation as it is and the situation as it should be would be in line with the normative alignment model (Thomas et al. 2009). Finally, grassroots initiatives could frame joining them as an opportunity to fight and convince powerful outgroups to respect moral principles. At the same time, potential participants would have the opportunity to behave morally. Such a framing may invite others to behave concordantly with their moral principles and offers them to display their morality (e.g., Van der Lee et al., 2016).
Conclusion and Future Research
Addressing the socio-ecological crisis requires a fundamental transition of current unsustainable production and consumption systems and challenges environmental psychology to outline what it can contribute to this societal process. The MLP (Geels, 2002, 2012, 2018) offers a theoretical framework to integrate such input in environmental psychology. Following the MLP, grassroots initiatives in innovative niches have the potential to set in motion a sustainable transformation. Thus, the goal of our paper was to systematically explore the first ideas for theoretically as well as practically attractive research lines focussing on grassroots initiatives. What is the central message of the research presented above?
We are convinced that social identity is a key concept for understanding the transformation of “I” into “we” – the self-categorization as a group member who collaborates with others to create a more sustainable world. From our perspective, this is a central psychological resource on which successful societal transition processes are based. Understanding and promoting the “crafting” of such a social identity defines one central task of psychology in the context of sustainability research. Reviewing the research presented thus far, we see substantial progress in understanding these psychological processes: Our starting point was the SIMCA that conceptualizes social identity as a powerful predictor of collective action. The evidence for the first research line demonstrated that the SIMCA can be successfully applied to collective pro-environmental action and should be used and extended further in this context. We believe that environmental psychology can use SIMCA to contribute to the discourse on why people work together for a sustainable transition of consumption and production systems. However, some other integrative frameworks and approaches can complement the SIMCA (e.g., the Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Behaviour; Fritsche et al., 2018). More research is needed to systematically test and compare these frameworks for the domain of collective pro-environmental action.
The second research line proposes to investigate the “crafting” of collective pro-environmental identities. It aims to answer the question of how people from politicized pro-environmental activist identities. As described, the normative alignment model by Thomas et al. (2009) provides potential answers. The evidence we presented provides support for the notion that participating in social exchange processes, for example in a group discussion, may lead participants to develop collective norms that define their collective activist identities and actions. The field study showed that participation in an event including group discussions by a grassroots initiative significantly increased participants’ collective efficacy beliefs and participation intention and the SIMCA constructs’ intercorrelations. This research line could enable environmental psychology to develop systematic studies to test different discussion and negotiation contexts and how these affect identities. However, the presented evidence leaves the questions about what happened during the discussion process unanswered. Qualitative studies, for example, stakeholder interviews and news media accounts, could provide more insight into the process of collective pro-environmental identity construction (e.g., Becker et al., 2021).
The third research line suggests focussing on the causes that trigger the formation of a politicized identity, namely perceived moral violations. We showed that perceived moral violation was strongly connected with collective pro-environmental identity and participation intention. Future research could systematically examine which moral violations influence the development of politicized pro-environmental identities and participation intention. With this focus on social identity, Research Line 3 used the core predictor of the SIMCA. However, collective efficacy and group-based emotions were significant predictors of collective pro-environmental action intention, too. Thus, future research that systematically investigates these two predictors promises valuable contributions for understanding collective pro-environmental action. For instance, Hamann and Reese (2020) systematically demonstrated that efficacy beliefs influence pro-environmental behavior and highlight potential research in disentangling the many dimensions that might be involved.
The niche concept of the MLP provides an interesting framework to locate the role of individual and group-based psychological processes within societal transition research. With this, it is our impression, environmental psychology can reach beyond disciplinary models and theories and integrate its valuable contribution into social sustainability science, for example on how to conceptualize the agency component of transformative societal processes (Rauschmayer et al., 2015).
Much of the theoretical ideas and empirical results presented above are preliminary. However, the present paper aimed to point out theoretically attractive and practically relevant psychological research on transformative societal processes. We hope that our impulse motivates others to develop and conduct research that transfers the presented ideas into more precise questions and answers.
Maxie Schulte is a doctoral researcher at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld. Her research focuses on processes of change, social identity theory, and collective pro-environmental behavior.
Sebastian Bamberg is a Professor of social psychology and quantitative research methods at the University of Applied Science Bielefeld. His research focuses on attitude-behavior models, behavioral change theories, and social identity theory. He develops theory-driven intervention and evaluation methods related to sustainability transformation in areas as mobility, resilience, and environmental activism.
Jonas Rees studied Applied Social Psychology at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, and Psychology at Bielefeld University, Germany, where he also completed his PhD on the social psychology of collective climate action. His research focuses on group-based emotions, discrimination, social cohesion, and psychological aspects of social change processes in general.
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