Environmental knowledge gap: The discrepancy between perceptual and actual impact of pro‐environmental behaviors among university students

Abstract

This empirical research investigates the discrepancy between the environmental attitudes and actual impact of pro-environmental behaviors. Survey results of 280 undergraduate students, from a large public university in the United States, show that there is a knowledge gap between the perceived environmental impact and actual impact on high-impact and low-impact pro-environmental behaviors. However, this discrepancy between the perceived and actual impact tends to be smaller in other resource-related perceptions (i.e., perceived difficulty, effort, and time and money). Some demographic and socioeconomic factors (i.e., gender, income, household size, and ethnicity) show significant effects on the individuals' attitudes toward environmental actions.