Values can be seen as a underlying mechanism for specific behaviors and beliefs. The values and environmental behavior are strongly related to eachother. Schwartz (1992) described 10 motivational value types of which one of them is tradition. Tradition can be defined as customs, beliefs and symbols that are passed on from generation to another.

This model describes two dimensions of how these motivation value types are related to eachother.

• The first dimension is openness to change versus conservation. This means that some people follow their own interest and rely on their intelligence and some poeple do what the society wants. So some people are more open to change behavior than others. You can see that tradition is on the right side, which means that this value is more conservative. More people rely on what the society thinks.
• The second dimension is self-enhancement versus self-transcendence. This means that some people are more motivated to only think about their own personal interest and some people are more motivated to think also about others around them and nature. Here, you can see that the value tradition is slightly leaning to the self-transcendence sight, which means that they care about the people around them and nature. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) you can also see that people are connected to nature. This is also shown in the general beliefs about Yin-Yang and the five elements.

According to this model, tradition is a value is less open to change than other values. On top of that, it explains that tradition is more self-transcendence. TCM is involved in nature and they use nature in their health care system, but this comes at the expense of nature and animals. Because tradition is ranked this way on these two dimensions, it is really hard to change tradional values, because it’s less open to change than other values and nature is well integrated in their health care system.