Urban sustainability commitment: Actor constellations and motivations

Abstract In recent years, cities have increasingly committed to sustainable urban development, despite it being a voluntary task. This paper investigates the causes behind this commitment by focusing on local policy‐makers and their motivation rather than viewing cities as unitary actors. Drawing on concepts of pro‐environmental behavior (PEB) from social psychology and considerations on the specific role of local policy‐makers, we develop a new analytical framework differentiating the purpose and orientation of motivation. We propose that motivations for sustainability commitment can be shaped by values, self‐expectations, social norms, or cost–benefit calculations and might be oriented toward the personal or the public sphere. We test our framework by analyzing data from 13 semi‐structured interviews with German local sustainability managers in 2020 and 2021. Our findings suggest that urban sustainability commitment is influenced not only by rational cost–benefit calculations on re‐election or reputational gains but to a high degree by individual values and the wish to fulfill pro‐sustainability preferences of the urban public. Commitment to sustainability might thus not only be shown for the sake of window dressing or green washing, as frequently accused. This paper complements existing studies on urban sustainability commitment, which focus primarily on structural and institutional factors, with an actor‐centered, micro‐level perspective. In further analyses, the framework might also be applied to actor behavior in other rather altruistically characterized policy fields like climate policy.