Pro-Environmental Behaviour in the European Union Countries

Abstract

The purpose of the presented research is to assess pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) in European Union countries in 2009 and 2019. The study used a synthetic measure developed using the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) benchmark method. This method enables distinguishing classes and ranks of countries depending on the adopted characteristics. Basic measures of descriptive statistics, i.e., average, standard deviation and the coefficient of variation, were used in the analysis of the data set. The main research question addressed in this study concerns the relationship between the level of PEB and economic, demographic, and educational factors—not only on a micro scale but also from the macroeconomic perspective. The research has revealed a wide variety throughout the European Union (EU-27) countries in terms of pro-environmental behaviour. Sweden, Finland, and Denmark top the ranking, while Malta, Greece, Spain, and Romania are at the bottom of it. Northern European countries can therefore be identified as a group that represents a positive benchmark in terms of PEB across the European Union (EU-27). The correlation between PEB and selected economic, demographic, and education-related variables was also investigated. Country-level PEB is correlated with demographic and economic variables, but it is not correlated with education-related variables.

Behavioural Theories and Purchase Intention of Renewable Energy Technologies—A Meta-Analysis

“…Morren and Grinstein (2016) mention that many studies have found that countries that have scored high on development have more willingness to pay for environmental products than the countries scoring low on development. Mikuła, Raczkowska, and Utzig (2021) also confirm the positive correlation between pro-environmental behaviour and economic development. They mention that the tendency to desire a better-quality environment increases with increase in income.…”

Hikers’ pro-environmental behavior in national park: Integrating theory of planned behavior and norm activation theory

“…Personal norm represents a moral duty to engage in a particular conduct or refrain from doing so, AC is defined as people's understanding of how pro-social behavior benefits others or their estimations of other things, and the AR shows how responsible people feel about the effects of their pro-social behavior. NAM is regarded as the most influential theory in explanation of proenvironmental decision-making process and behavior (Steg and Nordlund, 2018;Esfandiar et al, 2019Esfandiar et al, , 2022Han, 2021;Mikuła et al, 2021;O'Connor and Assaker, 2021;Gao et al, 2022), households' waste separation (Goh et al, 2022), purchase food (Faletar et al, 2021;Lafontaine et al, 2021;Yang et al, 2021;Le and Nguyen, 2022), waste separation behavior (Esfandiar et al, 2021;Setiawan et al, 2021;Shen et al, 2022), these studies have shown that AR, AC positively affected PN, and AR can be triggered by AC. Accordingly, this research proposes the hypothesis as follows:…”

Solar Business in an Oil-Rich Country? A Socio-technical Investigation of Solar PV Businesses in Iran

“…Having environmental awareness and concerns in parallel with prosocial/intergenerational motivations encourage solar businesspeople toward solar energy development. However, attention to environmental issues, including the concept of environmentalism and modern environmental movements originated in Western Countries, and intensively dealt with (academically) theoretical/empirically by European researchers [48], [49], [50], [51], [52]. Admitting my finding on pro-environmental behaviour in Iran, Jahangir Karami et al conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis, to investigate the pro-environmental behaviour of Iranians (1998-2018) reported that the Iranian citizens have about the average of the global mean index of environmental performance [53].…”