Measurement and Determinants of Environmentally Significant Consumer Behavior

TLDR

Psychological measures of proenvironmental behavior often fail to reflect actual household environmental impact, limiting insight into variables that could reduce it and indicating a need for multidisciplinary research. The study presents and compares an environmentally significant household consumer behavior measure with a common social science proenvironmental behavior measure. The authors conducted two large-scale field studies with representative Dutch households. Respondents reporting proenvironmental behavior do not necessarily use less energy; proenvironmental behavior correlates more with attitudes, while energy use correlates mainly with income and household size.

Abstract

Measures of proenvironmental behavior in psychological studies do not always reflect the actual environmental impact of a person or household. Therefore, the results of these studies provide little insight into variables that could be helpful in reducing household environmental impact. In this article, an environmentally significant measure of household consumer behavior (i.e., combined direct and indirect energy use) is presented and compared with a common social science measure of proenvironmental behavior (based on popular notions of environmentally significant behavior). Two large-scale field studies were conducted among representative samples of Dutch households. The results showed respondents who indicate they behave more proenvironmentally do not necessarily use less energy. Also, proenvironmental behavior is more strongly related to attitudinal variables, whereas household energy use is primarily related to variables such as income and household size. More multidisciplinary research seems necessary to identify variables that influence the actual environmental impact of household consumer behavior.