Improving Pro-environmental Behaviours in Spain. The Role of Attitudes and Socio-demographic and Political Factors

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, Spain has witnessed great economic growth. Nevertheless, in spite of an increasing degree of environmental concern, environmentally friendly attitudes and behaviours are still clearly below the European average. In this context, this paper analyses the impact of personal control and attitudes, and of certain socio-demographic, economic and political variables in the development of two environmentally friendly behaviours in Spain: consumption and purchase. The data were provided by a survey carried out in 2007 by the Centro de Investigaciones Socioló gicas (Centre for Sociological Research) in Spain. The results show the importance of personal control, level of environmental information, political ideology, age and educational level variables to explaining the development of pro-environmental-related consumption behaviours. Personal attitudes, work situation, female gender and level of environmental information influence pro-environmental purchase behaviour in a positive way. Taking into account that personal attitudes are more determining of pro-environmental purchase than consumption behaviour, policy measures such as informal education, tax measures, social and individual norms and interpersonal and institutional trust are discussed to increase the development of pro-environmental behaviours in Spain.

Understanding Household Waste Separation Behaviour: Testing the Roles of Moral, Past Experience, and Perceived Policy Effectiveness within the Theory of Planned Behaviour

“…This echoes the previous research that states an inconclusive result regarding the relationship between the education level and waste separation behaviour. For instance, the studies in different cultural contexts such as America, Spain or Iran have revealed that the improvement of individual's education does not necessarily lead to a stronger intention nor better performance in household waste separation [1,6,60]. One possible reason for this is that household waste separation requires specific pro-environmental knowledge rather than general knowledge received from degree education programs.…”

Willingness to Pay for Environmentally Friendly Products among Low-Income Households along Coastal Peninsular Malaysia

“…Meanwhile, items that measured attitudes towards environmentally friendly products were adopted from Ha and Janda [11] and Maichum et al [1], normative beliefs from Wu and Chen [16], and perceived behavior control from Maichum et al [1]. Lastly, items for willingness to pay for environmental-friendly products were adopted from Ha and Janda [11] and Afroz et al [3], whereas items regarding payment behavior for environmentally friendly products were adopted from Walton and Austin [50], Sánchez, López-Mosquera, and Lera-López [51], as well as Osman et al [4]. Furthermore, as recommended by Podsakoff et al [52], this study adopted the seven-point Likert scale (1 to 7, from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree') for dependent variable and five-point Likert scale (1 to 5, from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree') for independent variables.…”

Evaluating determinants of rural Villagers’ engagement in conservation and waste management behaviors based on integrated conceptual framework of Pro-environmental behavior

“…Additionally, the degree of individuals’ engagement in PEBs is potentially influenced by psychosocial characteristic factors, such as life satisfaction, gender, age, education level, and income; these factors have been investigated in many previous studies related to environmental behavioral (Raudsepp 2001; Cottrell 2003; Shen and Saijo 2008; Xiao and Hong 2010; Kip Viscusi et al 2011; Swami et al 2011; Sanchez et al 2016). The first factor is life satisfaction.…”

“…Meyer (2016), for instance, demonstrated that individuals obtaining a higher education degree reported a higher level of engagement in PEBs. Sanchez et al (2016) demonstrated that females reported a significantly higher level of involvement in green purchasing behavior than did males. Similarly, Xiao and Hong (2010) found that females reported more active engagement in PEBs inside of the home, such as in reusing and recycling activities, than men did.…”