The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Sixth Assessment Report (Synthesis Report) in March 2023, stating that during the past ten years, global warming had caused the global temperature of the earth to increase by 1.1 °C above the average temperature of years between 1850 to 1900, creating a range of climate disasters and increasing the pace of climate change. This has led to a loss of biodiversity and has strained the performance of global food, water, and energy systems. In response, the United Nations has repeatedly call for actions to limit the global temperature increases on earth to 1.5 °C above the average temperature of the years between 1850 to 1900, to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 [
1].
1.1. Pro-Environmental Behaviors of Taiwanese
During Earth Day on 22 April 2021, Taiwan officially announced its proposed roadmap and goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 [
2]. The Taiwanese government aims to reach net-zero carbon emissions by creating and improving the basic environment for technology research and development as well as through climate legislation. Transformative strategies for transition were planned in the energy and industrial sectors as well as involving lifestyle and social changes for Taiwanese. Lifestyle changes for Taiwanese included the transition of their diet, clothing, housing, and transportation into zero-waste and low-carbon pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). At the same time, re-energizing the social support systems in order to improve mechanisms for resolving conflicts and disputes arising from the transition, could allow the social transition to turn possible conflicts into potential opportunities [
3].
Over the years, numerous studies have been conducted to understand the PEB of Taiwanese. Lin [
4] examined the PEB of residents from Kaohsiung, Taiwan and their impact on personal diet, clothing, housing, transport, and recreation behaviors. Using the theory of planned behavior, results showed that attitude and perceived behavioral control played a significant role in the research model by positively influencing behavioral intentions. Behavioral intentions significantly influenced PEB only in the category of clothing. It was further pointed out that cultural differences could play an important role and results might be only relevant for Asia countries. Chen [
5] studied the PEB of Taiwanese using the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory, explaining 31% of the variances of PEB and noting that the new ecological paradigm, awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility had a partial mediating relationship between their antecedents and outcome variables. In addition, as people’s perceptions changed over time, follow up studies might be required for longitudinal studies. Yu et al. [
6] investigated the purchase intentions and loyalty of Taiwanese undergraduates toward green products. Results highlighted the mediating role of self-responsibility as well as the need to shorten the social distance of green products through outreach of mass media or recommendation from opinion leaders.
In recent years, Tsai and Tan [
7] expanded the theory of planned behaviors to include ethical leadership aiming to understanding the PEB of healthcare personals in Taiwan. Ethical leadership was determined to positively influenced attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Behavioral intention was found to be not significantly influenced by subjective norms due to the perceived weak social interactions in hospitals during the COVID-19 crisis. 19% of the variances of PEB were explained by this model. Tsai and Tan [
8] incorporated moral norms into the theory of planned behaviors to investigate the PEB of undergraduates from a university in Eastern Taiwan. Moral norms was found to positively influenced attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. PEB were moderately influenced by behavioral intention with 30% of the variances explained by this model. Chang et al. [
9] applied the theory of planned behavior to understand the PEB of tourists visiting a nature education area in Nantou, Taiwan. 84% of the variances of PEB were explained by the model with attitude having the strongest influence, followed by subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Situmorang et al. [
10] incorporated the new environmental paradigm scales into the theory of reasoned action to understand the mitigation behavior on climate change of residents from Taichung, Taiwan. Results showed that subjective norms greatly influenced behavioral intentions, accounting for 73% of the variances while behavioral intentions moderately influenced PEB, accounting for 48% of the variances. Tien and Huang [
11] examined the attitude and pro-environmental behavioral intention of Taiwanese by analyzing data from the Taiwan social change survey, where women were found to have stronger environmental values and pro-environmental behavioral intention compared to men.
From the various works regarding the PEB of Taiwanese, the theory of planned behaviors was widely used. The surveyed respondents were mostly specified targeted group of people by geographical location [
4,
10] or specified roles [
7,
8,
9], with a wide range of accounted variances regarding PEB. In addition, subjective norms, the perceived social pressure to engage in a particular behavior, were noted by several researchers to significantly influenced PEB intentions [
6,
10]. Taiwan, like most East Asia countries and regions, had a higher degree of collectivism and Confucian influence [
12], where values like social harmony and strong family ties as well as philosophical beliefs of harmony with the natural world, could also have significant influences on Taiwanese PEB [
13]. Hence, these cultural values and beliefs prevalent in Taiwan might suggest that the VBN theory could provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding PEB in the Taiwanese context.
1.2. VBN Theory and the Inclusion of Social Norms
Based on decision-making theory, the VBN theory constructed a theoretical model that influenced PEB [
14,
15]. The model focused on “values” orientation (biospheric, egoistic, altruistic and openness to change values) as well as “beliefs” regarding an ecological (new environmental) world view, awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility. This in turn led to personal “norms” involving a sense of obligation to engage in pro-environmental actions and finally pro-environmental behavioral actions (including activism, non-activist public-sphere behaviors, private-sphere behaviors as well as behaviors in organizations). The VBN theory has been extensively applied in the environmental field, covering topics involving implementation of sustainable car usage [
16,
17], acceptance of eco-friendly food [
18,
19,
20], conservation of energy usage [
21,
22] and the protection of natural habitats [
23].
According to Schwartz [
24], personal values refer to “a guiding principle for any behavior based on desirable trans-situational goals, which varied by relative importance” In the studies of PEB, altruistic values (concern for the welfare of others), biospheric values (concern for the environment and ecological welfare), egoistic values (concerned with their own well-being) form the personal value bases and are often applied by researchers [
25,
26,
27]. Openness to change (willingness to pursue new experiences) has been less researched [
18,
28].
A key aspect of the VBN theory involves the understanding that connection between values and environmentalism are influenced by beliefs, which include “folk” ecological beliefs (ecological world view) regarding the entities impacted by environmental conditions (awareness of consequences) and the effectiveness of individual actions in mitigating these threats (ascription of responsibility) [
15]. Research [
22,
29] had shown that personal values better predicted norms and behaviors compared to ecological world view, as personal values reflected a greater range of motivations while ecological world view concentrated on environmental concerns. Several studies exclude the ecological world view from the VBN model, giving a tighter model in explaining pro-behavior behaviors [
21,
28,
30,
31]. Similarly, some studies in the literature [
18,
32,
33,
34] exclude the ascription of responsibility from the VBN model.
Personal norms refer to an individual’s internal standards and moral principles toward behaving pro-environmentally [
15] and are repeatedly shown to be a significant predictor of PEB [
26,
28,
31,
32]. Finally, PEB are actions that could protect the environment from the negative effects of human activities [
15]. Among the four PEBs (activism, non-activist public-sphere behaviors, private-sphere behaviors and behaviors in organizations, some research has concentrated on all four behaviors [
28], a particular behavior [
32,
35] or behaviors in general [
26,
27,
33].
For many years, integrating other psychological or sociological constructs into the VBN theory continued to be an emerging field of research, including the addition of social norms [
28,
36,
37,
38], psychological empowerment [
39], environmental sensitivity [
33], knowledge barrier [
40] and overall image [
41]. Social norms had been identified as an important factor in understanding PEB based on environmental psychology [
42]. Social norms described social pressures felt from important others or the general public at large to engage in certain behaviors [
28]. People motivated by social norms tend to listen to recommendations from family, friends, co-workers, or contemporaries [
8]. There is research showing that an individual’s social norms are derived from their environmental beliefs, which in turn leads to a sense of personal obligation to behave pro-environmentally; in these studies [
36,
37,
38], personal norms served as a mediating variable between social norms and PEB. On the other hand, other researchers [
28,
43,
44] found that when an individual’s personal interests were in line with a collective society, personal norms had a positive influence on social norms, while social norms had a positive influence on PEB; social norms in this case, served as a mediating variable between personal norms and PEB.
In summary, applying the VBN theory on Taiwanese in order to understand their PEB is an appropriate model, as Taiwanese society emphasizes cultural values and beliefs. However, limited studies in the literature [
5] that applied the VBN theory on general Taiwanese were performed more than a decade ago and did not incorporate the highly collective feature of Taiwanese communities [
45,
46]. The emphasis of this study is to formulate a more parsimonious model of the VBN theory by streamlining some existing variables and integrating social norms in order to establish the constructs shaping the PEB of contemporary Taiwanese. Establishing this behavioral model could be useful for Taiwan’s goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and could serve as a future reference for neighboring countries with similar collectivism features, such as Vietnam or Cambodia, that are following a similar path of economic and social development.