Experimental evidence of an environmental attitude-behavior gap in high-cost situations
(2019) In Ecological Economics 166. p.106434-106434- Abstract
- So far, there has been mixed evidence in the literature regarding the relationship between environmental attitudes and actual ‘green’ actions, something known as the attitude-behavior gap. This raises the question of when attitudes can actually work as a lever to promote environmental objectives, such as climate change mitigation, and, conversely, when other factors would be more effective. This paper presents an online experiment with real money at stake and real-world consequences designed to test the effect of environmental attitudes on behavior under various conditions. We found that environmental attitudes affected behavior only in low-cost situations. This finding is consistent with the low-cost hypothesis of environmental behavior... (More)
- So far, there has been mixed evidence in the literature regarding the relationship between environmental attitudes and actual ‘green’ actions, something known as the attitude-behavior gap. This raises the question of when attitudes can actually work as a lever to promote environmental objectives, such as climate change mitigation, and, conversely, when other factors would be more effective. This paper presents an online experiment with real money at stake and real-world consequences designed to test the effect of environmental attitudes on behavior under various conditions. We found that environmental attitudes affected behavior only in low-cost situations. This finding is consistent with the low-cost hypothesis of environmental behavior postulating that concerned individuals will undertake low-cost actions in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance between their attitudes and rational realization of the environmental impact of their behavior but avoid higher-cost actions despite their greater potential as far as environmental protection. This finding has important consequences for the design of more effective climate policies as it puts limits on what can be achieved by raising environmental concern alone. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/f979eaa2-a8bc-4ed9-8fcd-e6f18f673c76
- author
- Farjam, Mike LU ; Nikolaychuk, Olexandr and Bravo, Giangiacomo
- publishing date
- 2019
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Climate change mitigation, Low-cost hypothesis, Online experiment, Collective-risk social dilemma
- in
- Ecological Economics
- volume
- 166
- pages
- 6 pages
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85070938188
- ISSN
- 0921-8009
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106434
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- f979eaa2-a8bc-4ed9-8fcd-e6f18f673c76
- date added to LUP
- 2021-01-20 16:45:09
- date last changed
- 2022-04-26 23:45:39
@article{f979eaa2-a8bc-4ed9-8fcd-e6f18f673c76,
abstract = {{So far, there has been mixed evidence in the literature regarding the relationship between environmental attitudes and actual ‘green’ actions, something known as the attitude-behavior gap. This raises the question of when attitudes can actually work as a lever to promote environmental objectives, such as climate change mitigation, and, conversely, when other factors would be more effective. This paper presents an online experiment with real money at stake and real-world consequences designed to test the effect of environmental attitudes on behavior under various conditions. We found that environmental attitudes affected behavior only in low-cost situations. This finding is consistent with the low-cost hypothesis of environmental behavior postulating that concerned individuals will undertake low-cost actions in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance between their attitudes and rational realization of the environmental impact of their behavior but avoid higher-cost actions despite their greater potential as far as environmental protection. This finding has important consequences for the design of more effective climate policies as it puts limits on what can be achieved by raising environmental concern alone.}},
author = {{Farjam, Mike and Nikolaychuk, Olexandr and Bravo, Giangiacomo}},
issn = {{0921-8009}},
keywords = {{Climate change mitigation; Low-cost hypothesis; Online experiment; Collective-risk social dilemma}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{106434--106434}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Ecological Economics}},
title = {{Experimental evidence of an environmental attitude-behavior gap in high-cost situations}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106434}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106434}},
volume = {{166}},
year = {{2019}},
}