Environmental Attitude Behaviour Correlations in 21 Countries

Malcolm Wright and Babs Klÿn (1998), Journal of Empirical Generalisations in Marketing Science, Vol.3, p.42-60


Abstract

We used data from the International Social Survey Program to investigatethe correlation between ‘green’ attitudes and ‘green’ consumption behaviours in 21 different countries. Despite avoiding the methodological problems often blamed for poor attitude-behaviour correlations, we found lower correlations than reported in a recent meta-analysis of this subject. Furthermore, the correlations varied considerably between countries, and in some countries were not significant at all. These results suggest that previous findings on attitude-behaviour correlations are not generalisable to all countries, and that attitudes seldom explain more than 10% of the variance in behaviour.

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