WHY ARE YOU DOING THINGS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT - THE MOTIVATION-TOWARD-THE-ENVIRONMENT-SCALE (MTES)

This paper presents 4 studies which were conducted for the purpose of constructing and validating a new measure of people's motivation for e nvironmental behaviors, namely the Motivation Toward the Environment S cale (MTES). The MTES consists of subscales that measure an individual 's level of intrinsic, extrinsic, and a motivation for environmental b ehaviors. These subscales correspond to the different forms of motivat ion identified by Deci and Ryan in their self-determination theory (SD T, 1985, 1991). Results from the first study supported the factor stru cture of the scale and revealed a satisfactory level of internal consi stency. Consistent with the SDT, the more self-determined forms of mot ivation were associated with more positive responses on the related va riables. Implications for the manner in which the public could be enco uraged to do environmental behaviors are discussed.