Diffusion of Innovation Influences the Value Basis of Pro-Environmental Behavior in Rural Communities

This study merged principles from the Diffusion of Innovation Theory with the Value-Belief-Norm Theory of Environmentalism to understand how values and knowledge together shape pro-environmental behavior (PEB) in a rural landscape. We examined how a series of behavioral antecedents varied by the timing of behavioral adoption among 617 survey respondents in Illinois, USA. We observed that biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic values, alongside environmental knowledge, predicted PEB, while knowledge mediated the value-behavior relationship. We then classified and compared subgroups of early, late, and non-adopters of sustainable practices using latent variable modeling. Findings showed that biospheric values were universally important in shaping PEB, that altruistic values decreased environmental knowledge among late adopters, and that non-adopters’ environmental knowledge played a less prominent role in influencing PEB. Our results provide insight into how to encourage the uptake of sustainable practices by recognizing the heterogeneity among community residents in their values and knowledge formation that shape PEB.