The Impact of Social Norms on Pro-Environmental Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review of The Role of Culture and Self-Construal

• Main Authors: Selma Saracevic, Bodo B. Schlegelmilch
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-05-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: pro-environmental behavior; social norms; culture; self-construal; systematic literature review
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/9/5156

This paper documents state-of-the-art research on the impact of social norms on pro-environmental consumer behavior. Our aim was to identify possible research gaps, in particular in terms of the moderating role of culture and self-construal, and to suggest potentially fruitful research avenues. To achieve these objectives, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on the impact of social norms on sustainability over the past 20 years, placing emphasis on the role of culture and self-construal. Altogether, we collected over 16,000 papers via Web of Science and subsequently used NVivo 12 for a fine-grained qualitative analysis. Our findings provide several new insights. First, we identified the most popular research areas, top journals and leading authors in the field of social norms and pro-environmental sustainability. Second, we pinpointed the most popular research topics in the context of the norm–sustainability relationship. Third, we revealed how culture and self-construal have been addressed when researching the connection between social norms and pro-environmental behavior, identified managerial implications, and offered future research directions on the moderating effects of culture and self-construal.