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

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.