Abstract
The gap between people’s attitude and action as regards environmental issues has been pointed out even while surveys registered an increase in people’s environmental awareness. Among the possible reasons is that people tend to automatically answer “yes”, as most surveys on environmental consciousness use positively-phrased questions or prompts. To remove the “yes-bias” in previous surveys, this present study conducted in Japan a large-scale questionnaire survey on environmental consciousness using negative prompts and free-answered prompts on which behaviors people feel good/bad/uncertain for the environment. This study also investigated peoples’ psychological factors and concrete pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) in daily life. The results of the questionnaire with negative prompts showed that the rate of people’s consciousness to the environment was lower compared with other surveys. Through factor analysis, five psychological factors were extracted as the explanatory factors of environmental attitude. Demographic effects on the consciousness and PEBs were also observed. Comparison of free-answers on concrete daily behaviors among five different environmentally conscious groups showed there were certain phases in the perception of PEBs based on consciousness level. Similar common behaviors were highly ranked as both PEB and doubtful behaviors, indicating that people were worried about actions that involve a trade-off relationship from diversified standpoints.
Highlights
Environmental awareness in Japan has increased and became distinguished throughout the world, alongside environmentally-conscious European nations such as Sweden and Germany [1]
Prompts asked how much people emphasize environmental issues, who is responsible for the environmental problems, how people perceive the extent of influence of their behaviors, how people balance pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) with convenience and cost, and what are the environmental information available in society
Text analysis was conducted for free-answers to prompts Q2, Q3, and Q4
Summary
Environmental awareness in Japan has increased and became distinguished throughout the world, alongside environmentally-conscious European nations such as Sweden and Germany [1]. Environmental education for citizens has been actively implemented by various organizations following efforts by both the government and industry associations to set stricter environmental standards since the end of the 1980s. Since the 1990s, industry associations have applied economic incentives to address environmental pollution as well as the global environmental problems. While environmental awareness has improved in recent years, especially after the earthquake in 2011 in Japan, a gap between people’s attitude and action as regards environmental issues has been pointed out. People’s actions do not reflect such high levels of environmental consciousness. Such contradiction between attitude and action has been mentioned in previous studies [2]
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