Presented by the David O'Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at the John Molson School of Business

Friday, February 18, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. – noon
Concordia University MB Building, Room MB 6.260
1450 Guy Street (de Maisonneuve Blvd. West), Montreal, Quebec. View Map

Environmental sustainability is becoming an important, ongoing challenge as people around the world show an increasing concern about how we can meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. To achieve sustainability, we must not only attempt to reconcile growing concerns about a full spectrum of environmental issues with socio-economic issues and societal quality of life issues; we must also achieve a substantial shift in values, attitudes, and behaviors so that pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) are sustained and become a part of people’s lifestyles. In my presentation, I will discuss how self-determination theory (SDT) can provide an effective theoretical framework to guide research and interventions on PEB and sustainable development. Recent research shows that, like the internalization of activities in other life domains, conditions that respect people’s needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, as well as their desire to be effective in dealing with the challenges of the ecological situation, allow them to gradually internalize socially valued PEBs and make them personally endorsed activities. The achievement of sustainability also provides a unique context to advance our knowledge on how SDT can guide research on the impact of government policies, on the influence of media, and on how people deal with the internal conflicts that result from simultaneously being aware of environmental issues, socio-economic issues, and societal quality of life issues.

Luc Pelletier

He is Full Professor of psychology and Chair of the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. He completed his PhD in social psychology in 1989 at the University of Quebec in Montreal. His research interests are in the domain human motivation where he has about a hundred publications. More specifically he is interested by the intrapersonal and interpersonal mechanisms that people use to maintain their motivation and develop an interest for a task, by the factors leading to different forms of motivation for behaviour, as well as the mechanisms leading to failures at self-regulation. From an applied perspective, his research focuses on the motivation for different activities including the motivation for ecological behaviours. For a complete description of the research activities visit the Human Motivation Research Laboratory website.


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For more information, Please contact:

Andrew Ross
David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise
John Molson School of Business
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
514-848-2424 ext. 5131