Green Psychology: Nature and Scope for Sustainability

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Background

The planet is experiencing climate changes due to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Adapting to these challenges requires a paradigm shift towards more responsible and sustainable ways of living. Sustainability aims to create products, services, or practices that address or mitigate environmental and social concerns while taking a long-term, inter-generational perspective on equitable distribution of scarce natural resources while offering profit-making opportunities. In order to incorporate sustainability into all human activities, including business, we need to understand green psychology and the factors that determine the adoption of green psychology principles by various stakeholders. The study of green psychology refers to the exploration of the human mind from a perspective characterized by its thought processes, emotions, attitudes, and perceptions towards adopting green practices aimed at sustainability. Several sustainability concepts and practices, such as; circular economy, collaborative consumption, lowsumerism, digital sobriety, and sharing economy will be more effective if actors display green psychology processes. Hence, coining the term green psychology and launching discussions about defining the concept and developing models, theories, and frameworks about the role it plays in shaping human behaviour favouring sustainability is timely. We expect that contributions in this regard would help in strengthening policy initiatives for sustainability.
Theories of human and social psychology play an important role in understanding cognition, affect, and behaviour related to sustainability initiatives. We also use concepts such as attitude, value, identity, motivation, belief, and norms to help us understand how human actions influence sustainability outcomes. Even though tenets of social psychology are used in sustainability literature to explain human behaviour, emerging new models of human engagement in real and virtual environments call for novel approaches to investigate how people differently strive for greener outcomes. The timing is right to disrupt the current trajectory of extant psychology and to coin the term ‘green psychology’, which is more inclusive to develop theories and models for modifying human behaviour for sustainability. This separate scholarship within psychology may contribute to innovation and entrepreneurship fostering sustainability. Research on the green traits of actors can help shaping human mindsets to embrace sustainability, as complexities in their cognitive beliefs can form an important barrier against green thinking.
In the contemporary context of sustainability, there is a psychological element. It is likely that recognizing and embracing the importance of green psychology will prove to be the most promising research in the twenty-first century. In this special issue, we aim to contribute to the understanding of the green psychology of consumers, entrepreneurs, business ecosystem, and society. In addition to conceptual papers and empirical papers, we welcome papers using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches in order to better define green psychology and related themes combining it with business practices, consumer behaviour, innovation and entrepreneurship. This list of themes and related research questions is not exhaustive and authors may also submit their contributions on any of the related topics:

• Defining Green Psychology and explorations on conceptual theories, frameworks, and models illustrating the role of green psychology in sustainability initiatives.
• People and nature from a psychological and behavioural point of view.
• The consequences of human actions on the environmental risks and hazards: perception, behaviour, and management
• Climate change and the psychology of sustainability
• Psychology in resource management for sustainability
• How can the psychological processes of actors’ help create sustainable business models producing higher societal and environmental impacts?
• What are the challenges faced by society, organizations, and governments in modifying the psychology of stakeholders for sustainability?
• What are the demographic and social correlates of green psychology?
• Does green psychology influence social innovation and entrepreneurship?
• How to use green psychology to foster sustainable business models by integrating innovative entrepreneurship strategies?

Keywords: Green Psychology, Sustainability, SDG, Innovation, Environmental Ethics, Green Entrepreneurship

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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