EVALUATING PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOW- AND HIGH- INVOLVEMENT BEHAVIORS

摘要

This paper introduces a Pro-environmental Behavior scale developed with the aim of classifying different ecological behaviors according to the level of involvement that is required for its performance. For it, a subscale that assesses behaviors requiring a high effort and personal cost (high level of involvement) was created along with other subscale containing behaviors that involve low personal commitment and less effort (low level of involvement). This article also seeks to analyze if pro-environmental attitude and behavioral intentions to tackle climate change relate differently to behaviors of low and high level of involvement. For these aims a self-registration questionnaire was administered to 148 students over 55 years old belonging to the Seniors College of the University of Malaga, Spain. The results indicate that the Pro-environmental Behavior scale has adequate psychometrics properties and the proposed two factor structure is confirmed. Regarding the relationship between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors of low and high involvement we found a positive relationship in both cases, while only high involvement behaviors were correlated significantly with the intention to act. Implications of these results in explaining the inconsistency of pro-environmental behavior and the compensation hypothesis are discussed.