Pro-Environmental Organizational Activities, Participation, and Life Events: A Narrative Inquiry of South Kalimantan Environmental Activists

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201125.012How to use a DOI?

Keywords

environmental activist, life event, pro-environmental behavior, South Kalimantan

Abstract

People tend to become actively involved in environmental organizations to respond to environmental problems. These activists have a specific motivation to join the organization and to behave pro-environmentally. This study aims to explain the form of environmental activities, the reasons for participation in the organization, and the previous life events that motivated the active involvement in pro-environmental behavior. This qualitative research study used a narrative inquiry approach in which semi-structured interviews were conducted on seven environmental activists aged 15–55 years from South Kalimantan to explore their experiences and to focus on their life events. Verbatim data were analyzed using thematic analysis techniques by NVivo for coding and themes. Results showed two categories of environmental activities: (1) altruistic through campaigns and community empowerment; and (2) biospheric through handling food and environmental problems. Reasons to participate in the organization found three themes: (1) environmental reasons (natural sustainability, greening, and cleanliness); (2) personal reasons (to gain organizational experience and pleasure); (3) social reasons (influence of others and social interaction). For previous life events, activists were motivated to carry out pro-environmental activities because of positive life events or experiences influenced by interactions with others, such as social life and environmental experience related activities outside the respondent’s current place of living. This study contributes to the explanation of a previous positive life event related to the environment as an initial motivation to engage in the environmental organization. Practitioners can consider creating a positive life event motivating an individual to become involved in environmental action.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Neka Erlyani
AU  - Ria Novita Rahimi
AU  - Niken Lestari
AU  - Syifa Oktavia
AU  - Aminuddin Prahatama Putra
AU  - Muhammad Abdan Shadiqi
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/11/27
TI  - Pro-Environmental Organizational Activities, Participation, and Life Events: A Narrative Inquiry of South Kalimantan Environmental Activists
BT  - Joint proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Intervention and Applied Psychology (ICIAP 2019) and the 4th Universitas Indonesia Psychology Symposium for Undergraduate Research (UIPSUR 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 144
EP  - 156
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201125.012
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201125.012
ID  - Erlyani2020
ER  -