Consumers' pro-environmental attitudes and their use of public transportation

Panel: Panel 4: Human Dimensions

Author:
Johanna K. Moisander, Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract

Researchers and government policy-makers have usually assumed that consumersƒ ecological concern and positive attitudes toward sustainable development issues are reflected in their overt consumption patterns, as a preference for public transportation, for example. Yet, numerous recent studtes have reported findings that seem incompatible with this notion.

Whether or not consumersƒ general pro-environmental attitudes, as compared to thetr specific attitudes towards the relevant behaviors, have an influence on their consumption patterns was investigated in the study reported in this paper. A relevant general environmental attitude dimension, reflecting a personƒs ecological orientation, was proposed to influence consumersƒ commuting intentions, and the proposition was tested by means of multivariate regression analysis. A modifted version of Ajzenƒs Theory of Planned Behavior was used as a theoretical framework for the study.

The findings discussed in this paper suggest that consumersƒ beliefs of how much behavioral control they have, m choosing their commuting method, have clearly the most significant influence on their commuting behavior.

Consumersƒ sense of behavioral control seems to be impaired mainly by various inconvenience factors associated with the use of public transportation. The findings also seem to indicate that a relevant general attitude dimenston may add to the prediction of specific behaviors. In fact, the paper presents findings suggesting that general attttude dimensions may even be better predictors of ecologtcally oriented consumption than attitudes toward specific behaviors. This seems to contradict, to some extent, with the Fishbein-Ajzen attttude theory.