La auto-regulación como variable predictora en las decisiones de los profesionales encargados de aplicar las leyes de protección medioambiental

Resumen

Self-determination theory (Ryan y Deci, 2000) suggests that autonomous extrinsic motivation, as well as intrinsic motivation, is related to people’s achievement, satisfaction, confidence and wellbeing. Pelletier, Tuson, Green-Demers, Noels, and Beaton (1998) indicate that, the more self-determined peopleare, more unsatisfied with current environmentalconditions they feel,more important environmental problems are for them, and they find themselves more able to do something about it. On the other hand,less self-determined people feeloften that the environment is not so important, they areless environmentally competent and less likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Framed in this perspective, this study aims to verify whether decisions related to everyday work, by professionals in charge of enforcing environmental protection laws,are motivated by self-regulation. With this purpose, 128 professionals working in an area highly protected by these lawsanswered a questionnaire that included cognitive, motivational and behavioral variables related to their everyday work. The results show that self-regulation is the best predictor of the probability of taking disciplinary actions against an illegal anti-ecological behavior, of professionals’ level of aspiration to perform their work, and of their level of both individual and group interventionin their everyday work.