Environmental Attitudes in 28 European Countries Derived From Atheoretically Compiled Opinions and Self-Reports of Behavior

Abstract

People differ in their personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment. The question is, can we validly measure people’s commitment by what they say and what they claim they do in opinion polls? In our research, we demonstrate that opinions and reports of past behavior can be aggregated into comparable depictions of people’s personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment (i.e., their environmental attitudes). In contrast to the commonly used operational scaling approaches, we ground our measure of people’s environmental attitudes in a mathematically formalized psychological theory of the response process—the Campbell paradigm. This theory of the response process has already been extensively validated, and its relevance for manifest behavior has repeatedly been shown as well. In our secondary analysis of Eurobarometer data (N = 27,998) from 28 European countries, we apply the Campbell paradigm to a set of indicators that was not originally collected to be aggregated into a single scale. With our research, we propose a distinct way to measure behavior-relevant environmental attitudes that can be used even with a set of indicators that was originally atheoretically compiled. Overall, our study suggests that the Campbell paradigm provides a sound psychological measurement theory that can be applied to cross-cultural comparisons in the environmental protection domain.

Sightseers’ Responsible Behavior Toward the Environment at Rural Destinations: The Moderating Role of Levels of Education

“…Another previous study of the environmental attitude measures in the 28 European countries found that the environmental attitudes of people with low, moderate, and high propensities for responsible environmental behavior differed systematically in the countries which were explored. These findings provide support for the theoretically expected association between people’s environmental attitudes and their protective engagement (Urban & Kaiser, 2022). People’s general environmental considerations were positively related with recycling and environmental activism.…”

Analysing the Influence of Green Marketing Communication in Consumers’ Green Purchase Behaviour

“…Particularly regarding green purchase behaviour, several authors proposed to explore the relationship between individuals' attitudes, intentions, and actual green purchase behaviour (e.g., [84][85][86][87][88]). For instance, Urban and Kaiser [89] found that the environmental attitudes of people with low, moderate, and high propensities for green consumption differed systematically in the 28 European countries analysed in their research study. With these findings, the authors could associate people's environmental attitudes (i.e., their commitment to protecting the environment) with their protective engagement and hence corroborate a generalisable positive relationship between environmental attitude and engagement in environmentally protective behaviour across a relatively large pool of countries.…”

Using the Campbell Paradigm to Understand the Role of Institutional Trust in Environmental Policy Support

“…Another question that follows from our study is how we can integrate different behavioral costs within the Campbell paradigm. In its role as a measurement theory, the Campbell paradigm estimates implicit behavioral costs from observed responses (e.g., Bauske et al, 2022;Urban & Kaiser, 2022). However, when used as a predictive model, one can measure the behavior costs (or their part) externally and relate them to the behavior that is being explained, as we have done with institutional trust and policy support in our study (for another example of how externally measured costs can be used to predict behavior within the Campbell paradigm, see Gerdes et al, 2023;Kaiser & Lange, 2021).…”