The Geographical Distribution and Correlates of Pro-Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors in an Urban Region

Abstract

A lot of emphasis has been put on the densification of urban form to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. However, many recent studies have found that central urban dwellers, even though their carbon footprints of daily transportation may be lower, might be responsible for higher total emissions than those that reside in suburban areas. Similarly, as with the urban form, higher environmental concern is often considered as an indicator of lower emissions, but several studies have found that pro-environmental attitude (PEA) does not always correlate with less energy intensive behavior. This study analyzes how urban zones, PEA, and several sociodemographic variables are associated with annual travel emissions and pro-environmental behaviors (PEB), using a dataset collected with a map-based online survey (softGIS) survey, contributed by 841 participants from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA), Finland. Although PEA can affect PEBs related to household energy consumption (β = 0.282, p < 0.001), clothing (β = 0.447, p < 0.001) and produce purchases (β = 0.449, p < 0.0001), their relationship with emissions from local (β = −0.067), national (β = −0.019) and international (β = −0.016) travel was not significant. Clusters of low emissions from local travel and high international travel emissions were found in pedestrian-oriented urban zones and residents of car-oriented zones were more likely to conserve household energy (β = 0.102, p < 0.05). These results might help broaden the current perspective of city planners, as well as identify opportunities for more effective mitigation policies.

Flights Dominate Travel Emissions of Young Urbanites

“…Similarly to Alcock et al [19] and Árnadóttir et al [42], we found pro-environmental attitudes and climate change awareness to predict more flights and a higher GHG load, not less. Defining this as a causal relationship between these two variables would be incorrect, though.…”

“…Moreover, the level of GHG emissions from long-distance travel alone reached three tons of CO2e/y per capita, which is more than 50% of the currently available global per capita carbon budget to follow the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pathway to 1.5-degree warming [1]. These findings are in line with those of recent studies of Helsinki in Finland [17,42], although we found slightly lower overall emissions and higher long-distance travel-related emissions in Reykjavik than in Helsinki. For the consistent car-commuters, the overall GHGs from the transport were found to exceed 5.5 t CO2e/y per capita and to transgress the whole current per capita carbon budget without emissions from any other consumption taken into account.…”

“…The global emissions are growing fast, driven particularly by flights [82] and, per trip, can be of a magnitude similar to average annual carbon footprints in relatively affluent countries [83]. It has also been recognized that such trips may fall outside the sphere where environmentally conscious consumption decisions are made [19,42]. While the above-described aviation taxes would cover tourism, additional measures might be needed.…”

Pro-environmental habits: An underexplored research agenda in sustainability science

“…A meta-analysis of 23 studies found the simple existence of sidewalks or footpaths to be the one factor most tightly coupled with walking behaviour (Wang et al 2016 ). Suffice to say, pro-environmental attitudes only matter for travel behaviour insofar as the environment permits acting on them (Árnadóttir et al 2019 ). Of course, the enabling of these pro-environmental behaviours does not guarantee habit formation.…”

Carbon Footprints and Consumer Lifestyles: An Analysis of Lifestyle Factors and Gap Analysis by Consumer Segment in Japan

“…Exploratory factor analysis is a useful data reduction technique to identify unobserved factors based on multiple observed variables and has been widely used in marketing research [27]. It has also been used in sustainability research to identify some of the most relevant factors using a large number of variables to provide meaningful insights into data, and in particular to examine the attitudes and behaviors surrounding pro-environmental behaviors such as energy conservation [28] and recycling [29], as well as pro-environmental behaviors in general [30]. The authors' literature search revealed no application of exploratory factor analysis for analyzing carbon footprints using microdata to date.…”