Egoism Can Be Green: Personal Values and Likelihood of Engaging in Pro-Environmental Behavior in Undergraduate Students in Nepal and the USA

Studies exploring personal values and environmental behaviors have established that biospheric values are positively associated with pro-environmental behaviors, while egoistic values are negatively associated. However, no studies have assessed this relationship in Nepal, a developing country in the Global South. In this study, we explore personal value structure and value–behavior relationships in undergraduate student samples from Nepal (N = 142) and the USA (N = 90) separately. We assessed the factor structure of the personal value orientations in both samples using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). We found no distinction between biospheric and altruistic values in the Nepali sample, but we did in the US sample. Within each sample, we tested whether value endorsement explains reported likelihood of engaging in pro-environmental behaviors (L-PEB). In the US sample, biospheric values were associated with greater public L-PEB, and in the Nepali sample, both biospheric-altruistic values and egoistic values were positively associated with public L-PEB. These findings reveal distinct patterns in the organization of personal values across two samples and suggest egoistic values may not inhibit pro-environmental behavior in some cultural contexts.