Talking green and acting green are two different things: An experimental investigation of the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes and low carbon consumer choice

Abstract

One major assumption in the climate change debate is that because respondents report positive attitudes to the environment and to low carbon lifestyles they will subsequently engage in environmentally friendly/low carbon behaviors when given the right guidance or information. Many governmental agencies have based their climate change strategy on this basic assumption, despite some anxiety about the value-action gap in psychology more generally. Here we test this assumption. We investigated the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes to carbon footprint, and both self-reports of environmental behavior and low carbon behavioral choices. We found that self-reported attitudes to carbon footprint were significantly associated only with self-reported environmental and self-reported low-carbon behaviors. They were not significantly associated with the choice of low carbon alternatives in a simulated shopping task. Given that the vast majority of studies on attitudes and behavior in the environmental domain use self-report measures of behavior, this may mean that we are generating research findings that could be making policy makers overly complacent about our readiness for actual behavior change. Implicit attitudes were not significantly associated with either measure in terms of group comparisons, but those with a strong positive implicit attitude towards low carbon did choose more low carbon items, but only under time pressure. The opposite trend was found for explicit attitudes – this increased only when participants were not under time pressure. These results suggest that Kahneman’s hypothesis about contrasting systems of human cognition might be highly relevant to the domain of climate change and behavioral adaptation.

Dependence of Adequacy of Methods of Micro-Segmentation of Network Users on Macro-Segmentation Errors

“…The method of abstraction -Theoretical-empirical method. This method allows in the process of analytical and design work to escape from the random, situational, non-essential properties, relationships and relationships of the phenomenon under study, as in our case, the main qualitative characteristics of users, and to identify the essential characteristics of the process [9]. So in our distribution errors of distribution relating to insignificant will concern technical failures, a human factor during the analysis of segments.…”

Formation of a Product Promotion Strategy Based on the Analysis of the Behavior of Network Users Through the Bruno de Finetti Paradox

“…The theoretical part of research on the promotion of goods directly in a turbulent environment and in conditions of uncertainty is represented by isolated studies in various fields of scientific knowledge. The complexity of the research question lies in the polyparadigm essence of the phenomenon [9]. So, some researchers consider this phenomenon from the point of view of adherence to a rational choice of communities in which reputation is formed, and some determine the phenomenon as a spontaneous formation with adaptation to conditions in dynamics.…”