General ecological behaviour: validation for Portugal

Some studies have suggested that socially excluded groups exhibit different environmental values and behaviours from mainstream society. To consider this in the context of disability, a survey was implemented to investigate environmental values and ecological behaviour. A high percentage of participants considered themselves to have a disability, long‐standing illness or infirmity. Over half of the sample had restricted physical mobility. The study used the revised New Ecological Paradigm Scale, a widely used measure of pro‐environmental orientation, and the General Ecological Behaviour scale to assess ecological behaviours. No significant differences were found between respondents with/without disability for either their general environmental attitudes or their general ecological behaviour. However, a positive correlation was found between level of physical mobility and general ecological behaviour. The results also show significant differences in the ecological behaviours of those respondents living dependently and those living independently; respondents living in care scored lower on the ecological behaviour scale.

Este artículo presenta un modelo de análisis para medir actitudes ambientales y comportamientos ecológicos de la población, utilizando la escala del General Ecological Behavior (GEB) de Kaiser, que representa una medición probabilística del comportamiento ecológico general. El GEB tiene en cuenta las diferentes circunstancias en que se encuentran los ciudadanos para poder desarrollar un comportamiento ecológico favorable (influencias contextúales). El análisis comparado permite identificar aquellas medidas efectivas y acciones políticas que faciliten el comportamiento ecológico de los ciudadanos, pudiendo sus conclusiones aplicarse a otros contextos nacionales.

In the current debate, ecological themes have become a key element that can influence public policy, as recent events involving green activist groups have shown. Public policies targeted to education, along with focused advertising, can strongly influence people’s beliefs and their emotional reactions. Understanding individual behavioural responses is therefore of the utmost importance for policy makers wishing to encourage more sustainable mobility. They could be greatly assisted by an effective measure of ecological behaviour giving them a better understanding of the determinants of travel behaviour, enabling them to analyse the impact of adopted policies. Ideally, such a measure should be simple to use, and it should be usable across different cultural and geographical contexts so as to allow comparisons between different countries. This paper seeks to determine whether the General Ecological Behaviour (GEB) questionnaire—as a dichotomous multi-items Rasch scale for ecological behaviour measurement—is valid for use in a different cultural context. We refer to the relevant literature, and we describe our approach in detail so that it may easily be adopted by interested practitioners. The research was done in the metropolitan area of Torino (Italy), where a multimodal real-time smartphone application to assist travellers and encourage them towards more sustainable mobility was being developed and trialled. Within this framework, an investigation was done into the pro-environmental behaviour of the participants in the app trial. Our aim was to determine whether a general pro-environmental attitude can legitimately be assessed using Item Response Theory and, notably, the Rasch model. Results suggest that, using an Item Response Theory model, GEB is a questionnaire that is able to effectively measure pro-environmental behaviour by travellers. There are no discrepancies between pro-social behaviour (a trait that is known to correlate with environmentally friendly attitudes and that the GEB questionnaire seeks to measure) and actual environmentally friendly behaviour; one-dimensionality, item reliability, and the absence of simple differential item functioning are all good indicators of a model that functions well. GEB has shown its potential in providing an understanding of people’s attitudes towards environmental issues and of how this information might be used to better tailor public policies in a number of sectors, in particular transport.

Socially desirable responses have been widely discussed as potentially biasing self-reported measures of environmental attitude and behaviour assessment. The direct and moderating effect of social desirability on children has not been analysed before. By applying a Lie scale together with a two-factor environmental attitude set measure and a scale of self-reported General Ecological Behaviour (GEB) to 198 pupils, we found a moderate impact of Lie scores on only one of both attitude measures and a small impact on GEB. In a multiple regression analysis general behaviour was predicted by attitude, social desirability, and the interaction of both. Social desirability had no moderating effect on the relationship between environmental attitudes and behaviour. Implications of these outcomes for research on environmental issues with children are discussed.

ABSTRACTGeogames are mobile, location-based and location dependent games for devices like smartphones and tablets. As geogames are played outdoors they offer various possibilities for environmental education. The geogame entitled FindeVielfalt Simulation is a location dependent game, developed in the BioDiv2Go project, which provides sensory experiences, discovering local biodiversity and increasing biodiversity-related knowledge and attitudes toward nature. The aim of this study is to examine the predictive potential of game-related enjoyment and of personal prerequisites (such as general ecological behaviour) on outcomes measuring acquisition of knowledge and attitude. Hierarchical regressions are used to investigate the dependencies of the constructs. The results demonstrate that an increase in biodiversity-related knowledge is neither predicted by previous attitudes nor by game-related enjoyment. Every player within the game was able to learn irrespective of personal prerequisites or game-enjoyment. However, the results also demonstrate that an increase in attitude toward nature is significantly influenced by game-related enjoyment and general ecological behaviour, with game-related enjoyment being the stronger predictor.

The present study aims to further develop the General Ecological Behavior (GEB) scale in order to apply it cross‐culturally. The scale is proposed to be relatively open, neither bound to a particular set of ecological behaviors nor to a particular questionnaire response format. Questionnaire data from 686 California students were compared with the original Swiss calibration data. Reliability, internal consistency, and discriminant validity revcal that the GEB could be applied to the California students as well as to the Swiss sample, which consisted of older adults. Because the GEB measure makes use of behavior difficulties–caused by situational influences‐the proposed approach also guides the search for political actions that could promote changes in more ecologically behaving societies.

ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDE AND ECOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR

Offsetting behavioral costs with personal attitude: Identifying the psychological essence of an environmental attitude measure

Summary: The General Ecological Behavior (GEB) scale was developed for cross-cultural applications ( Kaiser & Wilson, in press ). The present study compares ecological behavior in Sweden and Switzerland. Questionnaire data from 247 Swedish and 445 Swiss participants are presented. Reliability and internal consistency analyses revealed that the GEB scale was applicable to both the Swedish and Swiss samples. In general, Swiss behave more ecologically than Swedes. Nevertheless, several ecological behaviors turned out to be easier to conduct in Sweden than in Switzerland and vice versa. The GEB scale takes differential behavior difficulties into account that are most likely caused by situational influences. At the same time, the proposed behavior measurement approach guides the search for potentially useful political actions that make it easier for people to behave ecologically in some societies and, thus, can be adopted by others.

This research wants to see to what extent the role of environmental ethics plays in improving the ecological behavior of urban youth in Jakarta is an important part of efforts to create an ecologically comfortable city life. Environmental ethics teaches ethical principles that must be considered in managing and maintaining the environment. Meanwhile, ecological behavior displays practical attitudes and actions that can be taken to maintain the surrounding environment. Paying attention to the principles of environmental ethics is expected to have a positive impact on the ecological behavior of youth in the city of Jakarta. A questionnaire was used with measuring instruments, the Environmental Ethics Scale and General Ecological Behavior (GEB), which were distributed to 37 teenagers from a middle school and early level students aged between 15-20 years in Jakarta. This research states that there is a positive relationship between environmental ethics and the ecological behavior of urban adolescents. The more teenagers understand environmental ethics, the more they can improve their ecological behavior in everyday life. If urban youth have good ecological behavior, then this will help reduce the impact of the risk of environmental pollution, which will support urban planning that will become more comfortable in the future.

Do behavioral measures of ecological lifestyles reflect actual environmental impact? Three convenience samples of German adults ( N = 881) completed such a measure, the General Ecological Behavior (GEB) scale. Their household electricity consumption was self-reported (Study 1), assessed by a smart-meter (Study 2), or reported by the power company (Study 3). The latter two studies controlled for income, which can boost consumption just as it opens possibilities for behaving ecologically. Within and across studies, analyses revealed a negative association between self-reported ecological behavior and electricity consumption (−.18 ≤ rs ≤ −.22), even with adjustment for income. Furthermore, customers in a green electricity program reported more ecological engagement and consumed one third less electricity than did regular customers. These results indicate the criterion validity of the GEB scale for a highly practically relevant criterion and encourage the use of generic behavior measures in efforts to understand and foster more ecological lifestyles.

Building a model of commitment to the natural environment to predict ecological behavior and willingness to sacrifice

Shifting the focus from fear, guilt, and indignation related to deteriorating environmental quality, the authors hypothesized that people who see greater potential for restorative experiences in natural environments also do more to protect them by behaving ecologically, as with recycling or reduced driving. University students ( N = 488) rated a familiar freshwater marsh in terms of being away, fascination, coherence, and compatibility, qualities of restorative person-environment transactions described in attention restoration theory. They also reported on their performance of various ecological behaviors. The authors tested a structural equation model with data from a randomly drawn subset of participants and then confirmed it with the data from a second subset. For the combined subsets, perceptions of the restorative qualities predicted 23% of the variance in general ecological behavior. As the only direct predictor, fascination mediated the influences of coherence, being away, and compatibility.

Ecological behaviour and its impact on the environment are subjects of public concern and understanding individual behavioural measures to induce sustainable lifestyles is of extreme importance for policy makers to assess and promote sustainable mobility. To this end, a questionnaire with highly reliable items, evaluations of determinants and accurate measurements of ecological behaviour is a precondition for understanding the levers of behavioural change. This paper aims at an understanding of whether the dichotomous Rasch model provides a legitimate measurement of General Ecological Behaviour (GEB) using a 26-item questionnaire as a valid tool to assess the pro-environment behaviour of a large sample of users. A web questionnaire was administered using the snowball sampling plan in the Piedmont region (Italy), with a sample of 4473 respondents. The results suggest that using the dichotomous Rasch model, the proposed questionnaire is able to effectively measure the pro-environment behaviour of travellers. Unidimensionality, the perfect level of item reliability of 1, the very high item separation of 34.22, the absence of larger differential item functions, and the local independence are all good indicators of a valid model. This research shows how a good, validated, and reliable measurement of ecological behaviour would support public bodies in planning environment-focused transport policies thanks to the knowledge of which variables determine pro-environment behaviour. In addition, the proposed approach also allows us to measure the efficacy of the adopted policies.

Does the act of caring for a dog have a substantial connection to the environmental values and behaviours of children? The scientific current literature contains little empirical research regarding the effect of pet ownership on environmental attitudes and behaviours in children. The Two Factor Model of Environmental Values (2-MEV) scale and the General Ecological Behaviour (GEB) scale were applied to measure environmental attitudes/values and ecological behaviours aligned with the Children’s Care for Dogs Questionnaire (CTDQ) to measure individual care for dogs. The subjects were Slovenian adolescents in primary education and lower secondary education. A clear relationship emerged: students that reported a better level of care for their pet dogs tended to engage in more environmentally responsible behaviours. Preservation and utilization attitudes had no significant influence on caring for a dog. Female students tended to report better care for dogs and practiced environmental behaviour more often. Younger students scored higher on the preservation values and practiced environmental behaviour more often. Overall, this study provides an evidence-based framework for educational initiatives that aim to include long-term care for animals. This study proposes a method with which educational programs could achieve the goal of fostering environmental behaviours.