Mean or green? Value orientations, morality and prosocial behaviour

Many scholars have emphasized the importance of studying human values when explaining prosocial behaviours. They distinguished between altruistic and egoistic value orientations. Altruistic value orientations emphasize that individuals are motivated to act prosocially to benefit others. Egoistic value orientations stress the importance of benefiting yourself when acting prosocially. In literature on environmental ethics, various scholars suggested that a third, “biospheric”, value orientation is relevant when explaining a special type of prosocial behaviours, namely those in an environmental context (i.e., ESB). This orientation is typically seen as a subdimension of the altruistic value orientation. People with a biospheric value orientation will mainly base their decision to act proenvironmentally or not on the perceived costs and benefits for the ecosystem and biosphere as a whole. However, most scholars thus far failed to empirically distinguish between a biospheric and an altruistic value orientation. Zie: summary