Home, Car Use, and Vacation

Abstract

Strategies to promote environmentally friendly behavior among consumers require an understanding of how such behaviors are interrelated. We examined 29 different environmentally significant behaviors, using data from surveys in Germany (n = 967) and in Norway (n = 880). A priori models derived from previous research assuming either environmental behavior as a single factor or as organized by behavioral sectors, degrees of constraint, or frequencies of occurrence did not fit the data. In contrast, a model developed via a bottom-up approach with the German data was supported by the independent, Norwegian sample. This model can integrate several theoretical perspectives and suggests three distinct behavioral fields, with little or no correlation: home-based actions, car use, and air travel for vacation. The factor home-based actions encompasses several behaviors and correlates with the New Ecological Paradigm scale but also with a measure of impression management. Implications for understanding and influencing environmentally significant behaviors are discussed.

Capturing the Environmental Impact of Individual Lifestyles: Evidence of the Criterion Validity of the General Ecological Behavior Scale

“…1 The Rasch model makes use of diverse item or behavior difficulties (i.e., item order) to measure interindividual differences (Rasch, 1960(Rasch, /1980. Note that this difficulty notion within the Rasch model differs from another one that is grounded in subjective or perceived difficulty (see Bratt et al, 2015). Employing Rasch scales, Kaiser and colleagues (e.g., Kaiser & Wilson, 2000;Scheuthle, Carabias-Hütter, & Kaiser, 2005) have found that self-reports of environmentally protective behaviors from different domains can be aggregated to form unidimensional measures within different sociocultural contexts.…”

“…One-dimensional measures, such as the GEB, assume that an individual’s behavioral lifestyle reflects a generic intention to protect the environment. In contrast, multidimensional measures (e.g., Bratt, Stern, Matthies, & Nenseth, 2015; Leonard-Barton, 1981; Scott & Willits, 1994; Stragier, Hauttekeete, De Marez, & Brondeel, 2012) are thought to reflect different subjective goals or intentions (Stern, 2000b). Bratt and colleagues (2015), for example, suggested that home-based activities, air travel, and car use represent three distinctly different domains of environmentally protective behavior.…”

“…In contrast, multidimensional measures (e.g., Bratt, Stern, Matthies, & Nenseth, 2015; Leonard-Barton, 1981; Scott & Willits, 1994; Stragier, Hauttekeete, De Marez, & Brondeel, 2012) are thought to reflect different subjective goals or intentions (Stern, 2000b). Bratt and colleagues (2015), for example, suggested that home-based activities, air travel, and car use represent three distinctly different domains of environmentally protective behavior. Such results would seem to imply, for example, that persons inclined to protect the environment by refraining from car use do not necessarily intend to protect the environment at home (Stern, 2000b).…”

Reducing Energy Use and Carbon Emissions: A Critical Assessment of Small-Group Interventions

“…Nevertheless focusing on specific behaviours in isolation continues to be the standard approach to promoting energy reduction and other pro-environmental behaviour [8,9]. A concentration on single behaviours may in fact be inappropriate given evidence which suggests that groups of pro-environmental behaviours co-vary [10][11][12]. Indeed there is some evidence that concentrating on a single behaviour could be counter-productive as it can lead individuals to focus their pro-environmental intentions on that particular behaviour rather than on behaviours that may have greater environmental impact [13,14].…”

“…Given the limited success of behaviour change initiatives in reducing energy use or promoting increases in other pro-environmental behaviour, there is an urgent need to understand how such behaviour can be encouraged. Stern [13] and others [12,16,17] have pointed out that pro-environmental behaviour is multidimensional, with different determinants for different behaviours. The difficulty with commonly used behaviour change models such as the Theory of Planned Behaviour [18] and the Value-Belief-Norm Theory [13] is that they are not generally useful for predicting multiple behaviours [5].…”