ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Psychological Need Satisfaction, Personal
Well-Being, and Ecological Sustainability
Tim Kasser
Department of Psychology, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.

Abstract
This article presents a need-based theory to explore the potential
compatibility of ecological sustainability and personal well-being.
Relevant theoretical and empirical evidence is reviewed to demonstrate how ecological degradation can interfere with the satisfaction of needs for safety/security, competence, relatedness, andautonomy, thus causing lower well-being, and how ecologicallysustainable environments and behavior can promote satisfactionof these four needs and thus higher well-being. Three avenues forinterventions and policy change are then described, each of which
has empirical evidence suggesting it holds promise for simultaneously promoting higher personal well-being and greater ecological sustainability. These include shifting individuals’ values fromextrinsic, materialistic aims to intrinsic aims, helping individuals
live voluntarily simple lifestyles, and supporting people’s desires
for “time affluence.”I

n order to both survive and thrive, plants require certain soil
nutrients and atmospheric conditions and certain amounts ofwater and sunlight; without each of these in proper amounts,
a plant will eventually wither and die. Similarly, in order toboth survive and thrive psychologically, substantial research andtheory suggests that humans must have certain psychologicalneeds satisfied (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Kasser, 2002; Maslow, 1954).
At least four psychological needs appear to be crucial for determining the extent to which individuals flourish, are satisfied,and experience personal well-being1 (see Sheldon, Elliot, Kim,
& Kasser, 2001, for a review and relevant data). First, happiness
requires feeling safe and secure, as worries about whether one

DOI: 10.1089/eco.2009.0025

will eat tomorrow or be shot, bombed, or otherwise rendered deadsoon clearly interfere with optimal psychological health. Second,people need to feel competent and efficacious; unhappiness frequently results when people believe that they are either not able
to successfully do the things they care about or that they are
generally unworthy. The third need, for relatedness or connection
with other people, stems from the fact that humans are social
animals who require love and intimacy but struggle under conditions of loneliness, rejection, and exclusion. Finally, people havea need to feel free and autonomous, choosing their own behavior
rather than feeling coerced or controlled by internal or externalpressures.
Whether people’s psychological needs are satisfied depends
both on the environments in which they live and on the behaviors
in which they engage. For example, a long tradition in self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000, 2002) shows that the satisfaction of people’s needs for autonomy and competence depends
on their experiences in their social and cultural environments;
when their bosses and teachers and parents listen to their opinions and support their choices, people have greater need satisfaction (and well-being) than when these authority figures are more
psychologically controlling (see Deci & Ryan, 2002). In addition,
research shows that people’s needs for autonomy and competence
are better satisfied when they engage in behaviors that are intrinsically motivating (like playing with puzzles and pursuing theirown interests) rather than focused primarily on attaining rewards
and praise or on avoiding punishment and displeasure.
This need-based approach, therefore, suggests the usefulnessof asking two sets of questions in order to understand whether
and how ecological sustainability can be compatible with personal well-being. First, one needs to ask whether the experienceof living in ecologically sustainable (vs. degrading) environments
is conducive to psychological need satisfaction. Second, one needs
to ask whether the kinds of behaviors that promote ecological© MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC.

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KASSERsustainability can also generally satisfy the psychological needs
crucial for well-being.
There is good reason to try to understand these connections more fully because at least three empirical studies suggest that personal well-being and practicing environmentally
sustainable ways of living can be compatible. First, Kasser and
Sheldon (2002) found that Americans who reported more satisfaction and less stress at Christmastime also engaged in moreenvironmentally friendly holiday behaviors like using organic
or locally grown foods and giving environmentally friendly
presents. Second, Brown and Kasser (2005, Study 1) found apositive correlation between the happiness of American adolescents and how much they reported engaging in environmentallyfriendly behaviors such as turning off electric lights, recycling,
and reusing paper, aluminum foil, and plastic baggies. Third,
Brown and Kasser (2005, Study 2) reported that Americans who
experienced high life satisfaction and high levels of positive vs.
negative affect also reported significantly more engagement inecologically sustainable behaviors and significantly lower ecological footprints.
These data speak against the common assumption that living
in an ecologically sustainable fashion must involve sacrifices thatwill interfere with personal well-being and instead suggest thatliving in an ecologically sustainable way can promote personal
well-being. The theoretical viewpoint presented in this article
suggests that these positive associations between ecological sustainability and personal well-being may occur, at least in part,
because living sustainably creates environments and supports
behaviors that satisfy psychological needs.

Psychological Need Satisfaction
To explore this possibility, this section examines how the four
psychological needs may or may not be satisfied by different typesof environments and behaviors relevant to ecological degradation
vs. sustainability. Before commencing, however, I should mention
three qualifiers. First, I am not aware of much research that has
directly examined this hypothesis, so a good deal of what follows
will be somewhat speculative and in need of further empirical
exploration. Second, the research that does exist is largely correlational in nature, limiting our ability to make causal conclusions. Third, although individual variation obviously exists in
how people experience different kinds of behaviors or environments, my focus below is on how the majority of individuals, now
and in the future, are likely to experience different behaviors andenvironments.

176 ECOPSYCHOLOGY DECEMBER 2009

Let us begin with the need for safety/security, which is theone seemingly most likely to be influenced by ecological circumstances. Global warming, pollution, diminishing water supplies, and a host of other forms of ecological degradation eachhave clear ramifications for the potential satisfaction of the needfor safety/security. For example, many environmental scientists
believe that these and other environmental problems may interfere with humans’ ability to grow food in the consistent mannernecessary to feed billions of people daily, with access to sufficient
sources of potable water, with the necessity of breathing clean
air, and with living in places safe from the ravages of floods,
drought, hurricanes, or rising sea levels. In addition, many fearthat global climate disruption will expand the geographical rangeof diseases that currently occur primarily in tropical areas (e.g.,malaria), causing significant health problems for many. Finally,
if resources such as clean water and sufficient food do indeed
become scarce, history suggests that aggressive battles for thoseresources may soon follow. Clearly, any of these circumstances
is likely to decrease the felt safety and security of a substantial portion of humanity (especially the poor), resulting in decrements to their personal well-being. In contrast, if humans were toinstead successfully create circumstances and policies that obviated the ecological problems mentioned above, the result would
be increased confidence that they would have sufficient food andwater, as well as adequate shelter, and thus greater chances forsurvival. This confidence should result in greater satisfaction of
the need for safety/security, ultimately resulting in the improvement of people’s well-being.
The need for competence seems to me to have a potentiallycomplicated relationship to ecological sustainability. In particular, de Young (1996) has emphasized that attempts to increase thelikelihood that individuals will engage in environmentally sustainable behaviors not only must encourage people to do such
behaviors, but also should recognize that many individuals will
not feel especially competent when they try activities new to themsuch as recycling, composting, planting home organic gardens, or
fixing things they previously would have thrown away. Since theIndustrial Revolution, an enormous amount of what used to be“common knowledge” with regard to many ecologically sustainable behaviors has been more or less lost to the common citizen,
replaced by complicated technology and trained specialists who
conduct the activities many people used to do themselves. As
such, any attempt to help individuals behave in more ecologicallysustainable ways must recognize that, at least initially, many
people are likely to feel rather incompetent at new behaviors; this

NEEDS, WELL-BEING, AND SUSTAINABILITY

feeling of incompetence, in turn, is likely to interfere both with
their persistence at the new behaviors and with their personal
well-being. The good news, however, is that if individuals canlearn ecologically sustainable behaviors, they may ultimately
experience greater feelings of competence than what they currently derive from engaging in technologically heavy and often
environmentally degrading behaviors. That is, the satisfaction ofcompetence needs that comes from growing and making one’s
own food is likely to eventually be higher than the satisfactionof competence that results from driving to the grocery store andpurchasing a frozen meal. Similarly, people are likely to feel morecompetent by repairing an item themselves than by driving to the
local store and purchasing a new one. In sum, with regard to competence, it seems crucial to help individuals overcome initial feelings of incompetence so that they might eventually obtain greater
feelings of competence that will both sustain the new ecologicallyfriendly behaviors and promote higher levels of well-being.
Relatedness needs could also be improved by environmentsthat support environmental sustainability. I have in mind here
participation in local economies. Under the current economic
structure, much consumption is of goods that were produced
rather far away, creating environmental costs in terms of theemissions necessary to transport the goods and, in the case offood, the pesticide used to keep the food “fresh” before it is sold.
Another problem with the current system is that most consumers are “distanced” (Princen, 2002) from production practices
that often have high ecological (and social) costs. Distancing canlead many consumers to be unaware of or less concerned withproduction practices that might be immediately evident and ofhigh concern were the goods produced locally. Thus, local economies can work to improve environmental outcomes via increased
awareness, and thus pressures, for healthier means of production. At the same time, local economies might also improve thepersonal well-being of those who participate in them by connecting the participants in a local economy. For example, becoming
involved in community-supported agriculture programs, co-ops
of various sorts, and even local currencies are each likely to leadindividuals to spend more time interacting with others who sharecommon interests and values. Such interactions might then build
a sense of community, connection, and relatedness that in turnwill satisfy this psychological need and thus improve personal
well-being at the same time that ecologically sustainable behavior is promoted.
As with competence, the need for autonomy may have its vicissitudes with regard to increasing ecological sustainability, but

can ultimately be satisfied and thus yield higher well-being. To
understand why this is the case, it is important to understand what
is meant here by autonomy; my presentation is based primarilyon the conceptualization forwarded by self-determination theory(SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000). Dozens of SDT studies show that people
can be motivated by more autonomous reasons (such as by thefun, interest, and challenge of pursuing some behaviors or by thesense of enacting one’s important values through the behavior) or
by more controlled, nonautonomous reasons (such as by a senseof internal pressure that involves guilt, shame, and anxiety or bya sense of external pressure that results from praise, rewards, orthe threat of punishments). When people act from autonomous
rather than controlled reasons, the literature shows that they are
more persistent and report higher levels of well-being, as theirneed to be self-directing and feel free is well-satisfied (see Deci &Ryan, 2002). This literature implies that it is crucially important
to ensure that individuals engage in new ecological behaviors ina more autonomous manner and feel choiceful about their pursuit of such actions. Indeed, a meta-analysis of approximately
60 studies (Osbaldiston, 2005) found that treatments designed toencourage environmentally friendly behaviors are more effective(i.e., result in more pounds recycled or less fuel used) when they
focus on encouraging people to pursue such behaviors because thebehaviors are important or meaningful (autonomous regulation)
than when treatments focus on guilt, anxiety, or rewards andpunishment (controlled, nonautonomous reasons). As such, just as
we must keep in mind how competent individuals feel when theylearn new ecologically sustainable behaviors, interventions would
do well to encourage autonomous rather than controlled regulation of these behaviors. Attending to people’s need for autonomy
will not only increase the likelihood that they will persist at suchactivities, but should promote greater happiness as well.

Some Promising Avenues
Having discussed how the satisfaction of psychological needs,
and thus personal well-being, might be promoted by ecologicallysustainable behaviors and environments, next I shall describe
three avenues that seem particularly promising for further
research, interventions, and policy implementations. I focus on
these three avenues because each has been shown by empiricalresearch to be associated with both personal well-being (in largepart because of psychological need satisfaction) and with ecologically sustainable outcomes. Although these data are largely correlational, thus limiting causal conclusion, they do seem to holdpotential for serving as useful models for understanding how to© MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC.

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KASSERpractically develop interventions and policies that might simultaneously promote both sustainability and personal well-being.
Personal goals and values
Over a decade ago, Kasser and Ryan (1996) distinguishedbetween two types of pursuits in life: intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsic goals involve concerns that are inherently satisfying
in and of themselves because they satisfy people’s psychologicalneeds; the three most common intrinsic goals we have studied
are for personal growth/self-acceptance (i.e., knowing and liking
one’s self), affiliation (i.e., having close interpersonal relationships with family and friends), and community feeling (i.e., working to make the world a better place). Extrinsic goals, however,concern external rewards and praise, and are typically pursued asmeans to some other end; financial success, image, and popularity/status are three domains that typify extrinsic goals. Acrossmultiple studies and in a variety of cultures (e.g., Grouzet et al.,2005), we have consistently found that intrinsic and extrinsic
goals are distinguishable and in psychological opposition to eachother. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that such pursuits differentially relate to personal well-being and to ecologicalbehavior. For example, Kasser (2002) has reviewed a variety ofstudies demonstrating that extrinsically oriented, materialistic
individuals report lower personal well-being, whereas those withstrong intrinsic values are happier and healthier; much of thiscorrelation seems to be due to poor need satisfaction on the partof those who strongly pursue extrinsic, materialistic goals andto greater need satisfaction for those focused on intrinsic goals.
Other research shows how materialistic, extrinsic goals are associated with more ecologically degrading attitudes and behaviors:materialistic people have less concern for other living things,
engage in fewer environmentally sustainable behaviors and, inresource-dilemma games, report being more motivated by greed
and use up more of limited resources (see Crompton & Kasser,
2009, for a review).
Because extrinsic, materialistic pursuits are so necessary to
the maintenance of our current capitalistic economic structure(see Kasser, Cohn, Kanner, & Ryan, 2007), there are many processes in our social world that necessarily encourage materialism and discourage intrinsically oriented goals. To counter these,
Kasser (2006) proposed a three-fold strategy that involves (a)decreasing the extent to which people are exposed to materialistic models in their environments (e.g., by banning ads to children or by removing tax write-offs for advertising); (b) increasing
people’s resilience to the materialistic messages that remain in

178 ECOPSYCHOLOGY DECEMBER 2009

the environment (e.g., by building intrinsic values or by teaching
individuals how to decode advertisement messages); and (c) helping people to act more consistently with the intrinsic goals thatthey may value (e.g., by encouraging ethical consumption and by
developing alternative indicators of national progress). By following these strategies and the interventions and policies that fallout of them, people’s values and goals, and thus behaviors, can beshifted away from extrinsic, materialistic goals and toward more
intrinsic goals (see also Crompton & Kasser, 2009). As such, people’s psychological well-being should improve as their behaviors
and their social surround become more ecologically sustainable.
Voluntary Simplicity
One lifestyle that acts in the service of the dual goals of happiness and ecological sustainability is voluntary simplicity (VS).
VS has taken a variety of forms over its long history (see Elgin,
1993 for parallels in philosophy and religion, and Shi, 1985 for an
overview of simplicity in the United States), but fundamentally,
VS typically involves choosing to live in a manner that is lessfocused on consumption and acquisition, and more focused on
the “inward riches” of personal growth, family, community, spirituality, and communion with nature. Anecdotal research using
VS samples suggests that, although their lives involve certain
struggles, most report improved well-being upon adopting thelifestyle, and many are living in more ecologically sustainableways (Elgin, 1993; Pierce, 2000). Brown and Kasser (2005) followed up on these qualitative results by conducting a survey of
200 North American self-identified voluntary simplifiers and 200
mainstream Americans matched on age, gender, and geographicallocation. Analyses showed that VS participants were significantly
happier (reporting more life satisfaction and positive affect, andless negative affect) than the mainstream group; furthermore,they participated in substantially more ecologically sustainablebehaviors and had lower ecological footprints. Thus, VS people
were able to live more lightly on the earth while remaining happy.
Brown and Kasser (2005) also found that the extent to which people
prioritized intrinsic vs. extrinsic pursuits helped to explain both
the well-being and the ecological benefits of a VS lifestyle. That
is, VS participants were more oriented toward intrinsic and lessoriented toward extrinsic goals, and this statistically accounted
for much of their greater happiness and for some of their more
ecologically responsible behavior.
Part of the promise of VS, I think, stems from the fact that it
is a rather flexible lifestyle that can encompass rural or urban
lifestyles, spiritual or nonspiritual attitudes, and so on (see Elgin,

NEEDS, WELL-BEING, AND SUSTAINABILITY

1993 or Pierce, 2000). Another reason VS seems promising is thatmany North Americans report a yearning for a more balanced life
(Merck Family Fund, 1995) amidst the commercialized, hypercapitalistic culture in which they live. More research thus seems
warranted on this lifestyle, both to identify other individual difference variables besides intrinsic/extrinsic values that co-occur with VS, satisfaction, and sustainability, and to determine
whether interventions can be developed to help people live a VS
lifestyle (e.g., Dominguez & Robin, 1992).
Time Affluence
As has been noted above, our hypercapitalistic, consumeristic
society propounds a model of “material affluence” as the path to a
happy and meaningful life. Among the many unfortunate resultsof such goals is the resulting “time poverty” experienced by manyin contemporary society (de Graaf, 2003). Long work hours andhectic schedules seem to be a fundamental part of modern life, as
many individuals are working longer hours and foregoing vacations, some because of their desire for greater wealth, but many
due to corporate and national policies designed to maximize profit
and economic growth. Among the variety of problems associatedwith time poverty and overwork (see de Graaf, 2003) are diminished personal well-being and greater ecological damage.
Indeed, Kasser and Brown (2003) and Kasser and Sheldon (2009)
have both found that longer work hours and subjective reportsthat life is “too busy” or “too hectic” predict lowered life satisfaction, less positive affect, and greater negative affect. Kasser and
Sheldon (2009) further demonstrated that these negative associations between time poverty and well-being are partially mediatedby poor need satisfaction. That is, time poverty leads people tohave fewer experiences that support their needs for autonomy,competence, and relatedness, which in turn helps explain why
such individuals are less happy. When we recognize that being
overly busy leaves little time to pursue our hobbies, take care of
our health, and be with family and friends, these results are, ofcourse, quite sensible.
Time poverty also creates situations that lead to more environmentally destructive behaviors. Using a subsample from the voluntary simplifiers and mainstream Americans described above,
Kasser and Brown (2003) found that individuals who reported
working fewer hours per week engaged in more environmentallyfriendly behaviors and had lower ecological footprints. Again, thisis sensible given that “time affluence” provides more opportunities to utilize more sustainable, though somewhat slower, formsof transportation (i.e., walking, biking, or public transportation),to prepare foods that are fresh rather than prepackaged (thereby
cutting down on pesticide use, transportation costs, and excess
packaging), and to recycle, reuse, and repair.
Such findings suggest that psychotherapists interested in
maximizing people’s happiness and their ecological sustainability can talk with their clients about whether material affluence
has been successful in providing the outcomes it promises and iftime affluence might perhaps be a better solution for their lives.
Policies can also be developed to make it easier for people to sharejobs, to increase the generosity of the United States’ extremely
stingy family leave and minimum vacation laws, to protect
workers from mandatory overtime, and to shorten work weeks(see Kasser & Sheldon, 2009). Each of these changes could both
improve people’s well-being and increase environmentally sustainable behaviors.

Conclusion
This brief article has suggested that in order to understandthe potential compatibility of people’s well-being and ecologicalsustainability, it may be helpful to attend to the extent to whichpeople’s psychological needs for safety/security, competence, relatedness, and autonomy are satisfied. I reviewed a variety of ways
in which various forms (and outcomes) of ecological degradation
might work against the satisfaction of psychological needs (thuslowering personal well-being) and proposed some ideas regarding
how living more sustainably could promote satisfaction of thesefour psychological needs (thus improving personal well-being). I
then suggested three avenues for future research, intervention,and policy that seem to hold special promise for simultaneously
promoting enhanced need satisfaction (and thus well-being) andecologically sustainable behaviors. These included helping people
to focus more on intrinsic rather than extrinsic, materialistic values, to pursue the lifestyle of VS, and to focus on attaining time
affluence, rather than material affluence, in their lives. Each ofthese avenues can be promoted via a range of types of interventions or policy changes.
What is required next is substantially more research on thebasic processes involved in supporting both well-being and ecological sustainability, including applied research on interventions
and experimental research that can help support causal conclusions about the associations of these variables. It will also be necessary to tackle the rather massive social challenge of shifting
people’s values and lifestyles, and of passing policies that canpromote both happiness and ecological sustainability. While
much remains to be done, the need-based perspective presented© MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC.

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here suggests that it is possible for humanity to move away fromour current ecologically destructive and personally alienating
lifestyles and social organizations, and to instead develop a wayof existence that is both more ecologically sustainable and more
personally satisfying.

Acknowledgments
The manuscript presented here was funded in part by a grantfrom the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Foodand Rural Affairs (Defra), and originally appeared in a somewhat
different form as an appendix to Marks, Thompson, Eckersley,
Jackson & Kasser (2006).

Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.

Note
1. Throughout this article, I use the term personal well-being
to refer to both the subjective, hedonic aspects of well-being(comprising life satisfaction and the experience of pleasant vs. unpleasant emotions) and the euadaimonic aspects
of well-being (comprising feelings of vitality, meaning inlife, etc.). See Ryan and Deci (2000) for an overview of this
distinction. My sense is that the argument presented here ispotentially relevant for both forms of well-being, althoughempirical research is necessary to test this hypothesis.
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Address correspondence to:Dr. Tim Kasser
Department of Psychology
Knox College
Box K-83
Galesburg, IL 61401
E-mail: tkasser@knox.edu
Received: July 31, 2009
Accepted: January 5, 2010