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Abstract
A deeper understanding of human environmental behavior is essential for improving the effectiveness of conservation initiatives and overcoming barriers to the sustainable management of natural resources. This dissertation examines the role of context in shaping pro-environmental behavior, focusing on how contextual factors influence psychological motivations of human behavior and contribute to the dissonance between values, intentions, and behavior—often referred to as the values-behavior gap. Beyond individual motivation, this research also investigates how broader structural and societal conditions constrain effective resource management. Our research spans dual study systems: Europe’s industrialized urban economies and Gujarat’s natural resource-dependent fisheries sector. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS8), we applied the Values-Beliefs-Norms (VBN) framework and a moderated mediation analysis to examine how structural conditions moderate the relationship between an individual’s psychological constructs and support for fossil fuel taxes. Applying a similar theoretical and analytical framework to survey data from 205 fishers in Veraval, Gujarat, collected in 2019, we explored how fishers’ social wellbeing factors shape their psychological motivations for supporting a reef conservation project. For the same study system, we then shift scales from the individual to the industry level and use a political ecology lens to uncover how historical policies, socio-economic disparities, and governance framework inefficiencies shape resource management efforts in Gujarat fisheries.
Our findings underscore that individual decision-making does not happen in isolation but is embedded within broader economic, social, political, and environmental contexts. Across the study system and research chapters, common emergent themes include the role of economic factors, inequality, power imbalances, and governance in shaping behavior and resource management outcomes. By integrating insights from environmental psychology, behavioral economics, social wellbeing theory, and political ecology, this research brings an interdisciplinary approach to understanding environmental behavior across multiple scales. It contributes to the growing discourse on conservation and environmental behavior by demonstrating that while individual action is critical, transformative change requires structural shifts that align economic, social, and governance systems with long-term sustainability goals.