Are individuals’ environmental behavior always consistent?—An analysis based on spatial difference

Hong Chen, Feiyu Chen, Xinru Huang, Ruyin Long and Wenjie Li

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2017, vol. 125, issue C, 25-36

Abstract: Individuals’ environmental activities are vital to protecting the environment. It is necessary to discuss the consistency of such activities from the perspective of activity space, which is of great realistic significance in understanding regular behavior patterns and in guiding policy design. By questionnaire investigation (N=1509), this research examined the expression characteristics of environmental behavior in individuals’ home-working-public (HWP) activity closed-loop domain through the methods of factor analysis and conditional cluster analysis. The findings showed the following: (1) Environmental behavior could be divided into basic environmental behavior, decision-making environmental behavior, interpersonal environmental behavior and civic environmental behavior. (2) There was a downward trend in the mean value of basic, decision-making, interpersonal and civic environmental behavior. (3) Overall, individuals showed lower environmental protection willingness in public space compared with home and working space. (4) Individuals’ environmental behavior were not always consistent in the HWP domain; 52.85% of the samples demonstrated behavioral consistency and 1.38% of the samples showed low-value consistency characterized by low detection rate, indicating the small number of endogenous non-environmentally friendly individuals. The proportion of samples with middle-value consistency was the largest (41.06%); these samples represented mixed-type individuals and were characterized by high detection rate. (5) Inconsistent environmental behavior in the HWP domain could be divided into eight types mainly found in four groups: “external-control people” (‘high-high-low type’), “self-control people” (‘low-high-high type’), “organizational people” (‘low-high-low type’) and “laissez-faire people” (‘high-low-low type’). Relevant suggestions are put forward to promote high-level consistency in individuals’ environmental behavior.

Keywords: Environmental behavior; HWP domain; Consistency; Conditional cluster analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344917301519
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:recore:v:125:y:2017:i:c:p:25-36

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.05.013

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().