A survey of 385 residents of Tehran found that civic and social responsibility were positively associated with pro-environmental behaviour, while formal citizen participation was not significantly associated with greener actions.
The peer-reviewed study, published in Discover Sustainability on 24 September 2026, examined whether participation in urban governance and two forms of responsibility could help explain environmentally responsible behaviour in a highly centralised urban-management setting.
The results point to an important distinction. People can report a strong sense of duty toward their city and other residents even when their opportunities to participate in formal urban decision-making are limited. In this sample, those responsibility measures were much more closely related to environmental behaviour than participation itself.
Responsibility stood out in the statistical model
Researchers used partial least squares structural equation modelling, or PLS-SEM, to test direct and indirect relationships among citizen participation, civic responsibility, social responsibility and pro-environmental behaviour.
Civic responsibility had the strongest significant direct association with pro-environmental behaviour, with a standardised path coefficient of 0.378 and a t-statistic of 5.882. Social responsibility was also positively associated with pro-environmental behaviour, with a path coefficient of 0.328 and a t-statistic of 4.936. Both relationships were reported at p < 0.001.
Citizen participation, by contrast, had a small negative coefficient for pro-environmental behaviour of -0.051 and was not statistically significant, with p = 0.411.
Participation also did not significantly predict civic responsibility or social responsibility. The participation-to-civic-responsibility path was 0.048 with p = 0.475, while the participation-to-social-responsibility path was 0.115 with p = 0.153.
Formal participation was unusually low
The descriptive results help explain why the participation findings require careful interpretation.
On five-point scales, social responsibility had the highest mean at 4.09, followed by civic responsibility at 3.96. Pro-environmental behaviour averaged 3.20. Participation averaged only 1.67, with a standard deviation of 0.547.
The researchers describe this low participation score as a possible floor effect. Responses were concentrated near the bottom of the scale, meaning there was relatively little variation among participants for the model to explain.
This matters because a non-significant association does not show that citizen participation is generally irrelevant to environmental behaviour. It shows that the measured form of participation was not meaningfully associated with environmental behaviour in this particular sample and governance context.
The model explained 42.6% of environmental behaviour variance
Together, the predictors explained 42.6% of the variance in pro-environmental behaviour, giving the model an R-squared value of 0.426.
The same model performed much less well when responsibility was treated as an outcome. Participation explained only 0.2% of the variance in civic responsibility and 1.3% of the variance in social responsibility.
The proposed indirect pathways were also unsupported. The indirect association from participation to environmental behaviour through civic responsibility was 0.018 with p = 0.481. The corresponding pathway through social responsibility was 0.038 with p = 0.168.
These findings suggest that responsibility in this sample was not simply a product of formal civic participation. It may instead reflect personal values, social norms, environmental awareness, cultural influences or other institutional experiences that were not included in the model.
What the researchers measured
Data were collected during the summer of 2024 through online and field-based questionnaires. The final sample included 385 Tehran residents recruited through convenience sampling. Women made up 62% of respondents and men 38%. Forty-five percent were aged 20 to 30, 32% were younger than 20 and 23% were older than 30.
Pro-environmental behaviour included activities such as environmental volunteering, keeping neighbourhoods clean, disposing of household waste according to collection schedules, conserving energy and responding to environmentally harmful behaviour.
Civic responsibility included following civic duties and rules, while social responsibility captured concern for other residents, altruism, helping others and taking initiative to address neighbourhood or urban problems.
The participation measure focused on opportunities to attend urban-management meetings, oversight of urban projects and participation in public-benefit urban-management activities.
Why governance context matters
The study is particularly interested in the relationship between behaviour and governance structure. Tehran was selected as a setting in which urban management operates within a strongly centralised institutional environment.
The authors argue that participation may have limited behavioural influence when people can take part procedurally but have little meaningful influence over decisions. Under those conditions, participation may not create the sense of efficacy or ownership that could translate involvement into action.
That interpretation is consistent with the very low participation scores observed in the sample, but it remains an interpretation rather than a causal finding. The study did not experimentally manipulate participation or compare different governance systems.
The findings do not mean participation is ineffective
A key limitation is that the study is cross-sectional. All variables were measured at one point in time, so the statistical paths cannot establish that stronger responsibility causes greener behaviour.
Convenience sampling also limits generalisability. The 385 respondents cannot be assumed to represent all residents of Tehran, Iran or other centralised governance systems.
The low participation score creates another limitation. With responses clustered near the lower end of the scale, the analysis had less information about how people with moderate or high levels of participation might behave.
The responsibility measures were assembled from established theoretical sources and reviewed by six experts, but the study did not conduct a separate pilot study. Self-reported environmental behaviour may also differ from objectively observed behaviour.
What this could mean for cities
For urban policymakers, the findings suggest that simply creating formal opportunities for participation may not be enough. Participation may be more consequential when citizens believe that their involvement can genuinely influence decisions and when institutions provide feedback showing how public input affects outcomes.
At the same time, programmes that strengthen civic duty, collective responsibility and concern for neighbourhood wellbeing may support environmental behaviour even where formal participatory channels remain limited.
The broader research question is therefore not whether participation or responsibility matters in isolation. It is how institutional structures determine whether civic engagement becomes meaningful enough to shape behaviour.
Future studies could test that question by comparing cities with different governance structures, using representative samples, tracking behaviour over time and measuring whether citizens believe their participation has real influence.
Source Information
Study Title: Responsibility over participation in explaining pro-environmental behavior in centralized urban management
Author: Arman Hamidi
Journal: Discover Sustainability
Published: 24 September 2026
Sample: 385 residents of Tehran, Iran
Method: Cross-sectional questionnaire survey analysed with PLS-SEM
Main finding: Civic responsibility and social responsibility were positively associated with pro-environmental behaviour, while measured citizen participation showed no significant direct or indirect association.
DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04828-9
