This article explores the underlying factors of sustainable consumption behavior. Survey data are employed to test the impacts of environmental attitude, knowledge, social awareness, perceived credibility of information sources, self-efficacy and gender on sustainable consumption patterns among samples of university students in Iran and Japan. This contributes to the scientific search for valid explanatory models that could be employed to foster lifestyle transformations towards sustainability. Our findings confirm positive relationship between self-efficacy, social awareness and sustainable consumption in both Japanese and Iranian samples. Other predicators did not have a consistent effect in both samples. This article also presents the results of moderated regression and discusses which impacts were moderated by gender. The discussion presents with interpretation of the findings and proposes possible alternative explanations.

To examine the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures regarding their position in the success of energy transition, attitudes towards these technologies have been increasingly recognised to play an important role. Notably, most of empirical literature has focused on the global northern countries, with bottom-up transition governance structure. In this paper, we study attitudes towards photovoltaics in Iran, as a fossil fuel-rich country of the global south, with a top-down energy transition structure and committed to UNFCCC. We focused on governmental organisations as a key stakeholder group regarding their role in winning public acceptance. Aiming at finding determinants of attitudes towards PV, we conducted 15 qualitative interviews in 10 governmental organisations in Golestan, Guilan and Tehran. Taking an inductive approach to the data, we considered the acceptance and attitude theories as sensitising concepts to investigate common and specific issues in terms of social acceptance in Iran. We find accessing electricity and diversifying electricity resources via PV as the key technical drivers, and the upstream policies as the key political drivers towards PV adoption. Though the weak policies (design and implementation), privileging economic and technical obstacles, do hinder the PV adoption and shape negative attitudes toward it. We realise that the previous literature overlooked the fossil fuel-rich countries and their energy transition governance structure. Our findings imply that better-designed upstream policies with a more enabling policy framework are needed to motivate actions on the governmental organisation level.

This study investigates the recreational value of the Helen protected forest area, incorporating the new environmental paradigm into economic valuation. Visitors’ willingness to pay and its association with scores reflecting the new environmental paradigm were assessed through contingent valuation and a dual-dimensional questionnaire. Two models are employed: a base model with socio-economic variables and a model integrating new environmental paradigm. Results indicate that 83.04% of visitors are willing to pay for recreational use. The proposed amount, visit frequency, new environmental paradigm, age, gender, education, and income were found to significantly influence the acceptance of willingness to pay. Results indicated a strong positive correlation exists between new environmental paradigm and willingness to pay, highlighting the influence of environmental perspective. Average willingness to pay per household per visit is IRR 190,390.4 (USD 0.53), translating to an annual recreational value of IRR 22,629,264,215 (USD 64,088) for the entire Helen forest. The average new environmental paradigm scores for visitors stand at 57.36, with the statement “plants and animals have similar rights to humans” receiving the highest score of 28.4. These findings emphasize the importance of considering environmental perspectives in managing recreational sites. Integrating a new environmental paradigm into valuation methods can inform sustainable management strategies that balance economic development with environmental conservation and social well-being.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of social factors underpinning gas consumption behaviors. These factors included subjective norms, self-efficacy, knowledge of consumption, and environmental beliefs which can influence gas consumption behavior. Data were obtained from a survey of 510 people of domestic consumers of natural gas in Mazandaran province in Iran. The hypothesized effects were measured by applying a multiple regression analysis (stepwise method) and path analysis. Results showed that general/specific environmental beliefs, subjective norms, and self-efficacy positively influenced gas consumers’ behavior. The results also showed that subjective norms had a greater impact on gas consumers’ behavior than other variables. Among socio-demographical factors, there was a positive relationship between age and gas consumption behavior, while incomes showed a negative association with it. Finally, there was no significant difference in gas consumers’ behavior by education and gender. The results suggested that environmental education, modelling, and publicity play a role in controlling gas consumption behavior. The results of this paper have some implications for policy makers to optimize energy consumption behavior at the household level.