Value-Belief-Norm Model (VBN)

The value-belief-norm (VBN) model explains pro-environmental behavior as the end of a causal chain that runs from basic human values, through environmental beliefs, to a felt moral obligation that activates action. Paul Stern, Thomas Dietz, and colleagues introduced it in 1999 to account for support for the environmental movement, and Stern elaborated it in 2000 as a general theory of environmentally significant behavior. The chain links Schwartz value orientations (especially biospheric and altruistic values) to an ecological worldview measured by the New Ecological Paradigm, then to awareness of adverse consequences and ascription of responsibility, which in turn activate personal norms — the internalized sense of obligation to act. Those personal norms predict several distinct classes of behavior: environmental activism, non-activist public support, private-sphere behaviors, and behavior in organizations. The model fuses Schwartz's value theory with Schwartz's norm-activation theory and the NEP, and it is typically tested with path analysis or structural equation modeling. VBN remains the leading sociological account of why people act for the environment.