What Works for Whom? Investigating Adolescents’ Pro-Environmental Behaviors

Abstract

Pro-environmental behavior has been extensively studied using general models of predicting behavior; however, these models have very limited value in making inferences about individuals. To address this shortcoming, a person-oriented investigation of five pro-environmental behaviors differing in complexity was carried out using a clustering approach. A total of 863 adolescents (mean age 15.72 (SD = 1.1), 53.5% female) filled in the Big Five Inventory and measures of recycling, water conservation, electricity conservation, sustainable consumption, and sustainable transportation use based on an extended model of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). TPB models were investigated in empirically derived clusters of individuals that differ by their personality traits. The results suggest that individuals in different personality clusters could be reached effectively through different means when trying to promote pro-environmental behaviors and different pro-environmental behaviors should not be regarded as homogeneous.

Using the theory of planned behavior to understand the students’ pro-environmental behavior: a case-study in a Portuguese HEI

“…In addition, the results revealed that the students' PBC and pro-environmental behavioral intention have a positive impact on their proenvironmental behavior. These conclusions are consistent with previous researches (Niaura, 2013;De Leeuw et al, 2015;Gao et al, 2017;Tommasetti et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2019;Poškus, 2020).…”

“…Contrary to our expectations, the results revealed that the students' environmental attitude and knowledge have no significant impact on their pro-environmental behavioral intentions. Regarding the absence of a significant relation between attitude and behavioral intentions, this finding is unexpected, because the majority of the studies using the TPB identify a positive relation between environmental attitude and pro-environmental behavioral intention, although underlining that the effect is commonly weak (Fielding et al, 2008;Niaura, 2013;De Leeuw et al, 2015;Gao et al, 2017;Tommasetti et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2019;Poškus, 2020). It is observed that a positive environmental attitude is a good starting point to stimulate a pro-environmental behavioral intention, but there may be other factors countering this effect, namely, social, economic and demographic influences, which may affect the individual's pro-environmental intention.…”

“…Of these studies, six focus on the environmental behavior of higher education students (Clement et al , 2014; De Leeuw et al , 2015; Macovei, 2015; Moradhaseli et al , 2017; Pan et al , 2018; Hansmann et al , 2020). The other ten studies explore the environmental behavior of other population groups, namely, hotel customers (Han et al , 2010), individuals of a certain age groups (Niaura, 2013; Runhaar et al , 2019; Poškus, 2020 ) , workers from certain organizations (Greaves et al , 2013; Gao et al , 2017), specific professions (Yang et al , 2019) and residents in specific geographical areas (Sun et al , 2015; Tommasetti et al , 2018; Hameed et al , 2019). It is also important to highlight that the authors are unaware of the existence of research studies published in scientific journals in the past decade, exploring the higher education students’ pro-environmental behavior in Portugal, with the application of the TPB.…”

Toward the Development and Validation of a Model of Environmental Citizenship of Young Adults

“…It must be noted that both political beliefs and personality traits have at least some hereditary basis [14], making them important variables to consider if we are to understand the environmental citizenship of different individuals. In this sense, it becomes reasonable to adopt a person-oriented approach toward these variables [55][56][57], relating them with the model not as covariates, but as moderators for groups of differing individuals with relatively stable characteristics that cannot be targeted through interventions.…”

Sustainability Psychology of Disruption: Attitude towards Water Purification Technology Can Be Predicted by Cultural Value Orientation and Personality Traits

“…A prior study by Harmon et al [11] also found positive correlations between openness and attitudes toward water conservation. A study by Poškus [50] found that individuals with lower openness were incompatible with pro-environmental activities as such activities "require changing habits and adopting new practices" (p. 12).…”