Beyond environmental attitudes – the effect of non-cognitive attitudes like frugality and shopping orientation on environmental behavior

Maria Csutora, Zsófia Vetőné Mózner and Gabor Harangozo

Social Responsibility Journal, 2025, vol. 22, issue 1, 92-113

Abstract: PurposeDrivers of consumers’ environmental behavior are widely studied, but noncognitive and nonenvironmental awareness-related drivers are often overlooked. This study also looks beyond environmental attitudes such as frugality and shopping orientation.Design/methodology/approachA partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) research model was developed to assess the links between exogenous constructs of environmental and nonenvironmental attitudes and their impact on the construct of environmental behavior, through the mediating effect of conservation attitudes. The model was tested on a representative, 1,000-respondent consumer survey.FindingsThe results showed that, in addition to environmental attitudes, financial frugality also had a positive effect on environmental behavior, both directly and indirectly. However, shopping orientation had a negative indirect effect on environmental behavior. The significant role of noncognitive factors on environmental behavior was thus confirmed.Research limitations/implicationsThe interrelationship of various and potentially divergent factors of environmental behavior needs to be better identified in future studies. A limitation is that even if the sample is representative, it only covers one country.Practical implicationsPromoting only environmental drivers of pro-environmental behavior is not sufficient, as economic pro-growth messages can outweigh the positive effects.Social implicationsTo improve environmental behavior of consumers, a multifaceted approach is needed to study the various drivers of that behavior.Originality/valueThe authors have included both incremental variables and radical lifestyle-change-related ones in the construct of environmental behavior, while most SEM studies are limited to the former. Furthermore, the authors also included noncognitive and habitual attitudes as exogenous constructs, a missing link from most studies. The use of a multidimensional environmental behavior scale also adds novelty.

Keywords: Environmental behavior; Financial frugality; Conservation attitude; Environmental movement activism; Shopping orientation; Structural equation modeling (SEM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/srj/article/22/1/92/130300 ... es-the-effect-of-non (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/srj/article-pdf/22/1/92/10341992/srj-01-2025-0061en.pdf (application/pdf)

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:eme:srjpps:srj-01-2025-0061

DOI: 10.1108/SRJ-01-2025-0061

Access Statistics for this article

Social Responsibility Journal is currently edited by Prof David Crowther

More articles in Social Responsibility Journal from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().