Using the theory of planned behavior to explore environmental behavioral intentions in the workplace

By Martin Greaves, Lara D. Zibarras, Chris Stride. 2013

676 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper presents a study using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explore environmental behavioral intentions in a workplace setting. The first stage of the research process was the development of a questionnaire covering TPB constructs, their antecedent beliefs, and environmental behavioral intentions across three scenarios (switching off PCs every time employees left their desks for an hour or more; using video-conferencing for meetings that would otherwise require travel; and recycling as much waste as possible), using best practice guidelines to ensure that it was specific and precisely defined for the target population. This was then administered to N = 449 participants, with the resulting dataset used to test hypotheses relating antecedent beliefs to behavioral intentions via the potentially mediating effect of TPB constructs. TPB constructs were found to explain between 46% and 61% of the variance in employee intentions to engage in three environmental behaviors, and to mediate the effects of specific antecedent beliefs upon employee intentions to engage in these behaviors. The results form a basis upon which interventions could be developed within the host organization, and are discussed in relation to their implications, in terms of theory, practice and future research.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/56dc160941270e7d9c6688d48eaf4e204d8419b6

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Citations in the corpus

Overcoming the barriers to pro-environmental behaviors in the workplace: A systematic review (2018, background): “For instance, Greaves et al. (2013) found that the potential to save time was a significant facilitator to the use of video-conferencing, while the time to start up was an important obstacle to switching off computers when leaving the desk.”
Pro-environmental behaviors through the lens of the theory of planned behavior: A scoping review (2020, background): “One third of the publications analyzed did not attempt to explain behavior and focused only on intention (e.g., Gao et al., 2017; Greaves et al., 2013).”