The Significance of Hedonic Values for Environmentally Relevant Attitudes, Preferences, and Actions

This article aimed to demonstrate that hedonic values are important for understanding environmentally relevant beliefs, preferences, and actions, next to egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values. In four studies, the authors found consistent support for their hypothesis that hedonic, egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values can be distinguished empirically, suggesting that the distinction between the four types of values is not only theoretically meaningful but also recognized by individuals. Importantly, in line with the authors’ expectations, hedonic values appeared to be significantly and negatively related to a range of environmentally relevant attitudes, preferences, and behaviors, even when the other values were controlled for. This suggests that it is indeed important to include hedonic values in environmental studies and that interventions aimed to promote proenvironmental actions should consider hedonic consequences of actions, as these may be important barriers for behavior change.