Abstract
In this paper we explore the existence of behavioral consistency between individuals’ pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in related domains (cross-domain), distinguishing between the following two types of behaviors that the literature has identified as entailing different levels of sacrifice on the part of the individual: curtailment, i.e., implying the adoption of daily habits, and efficiency behaviors, i.e., installation of efficient devices. Using a dataset on bottled water demand from two cities in southern Spain, we find evidence of behavioral consistency between the undertaking of certain pro-environmental habits related to household water consumption and the decision to consume (or not) bottled water. These effects are found only when curtailment behaviors are considered, but not in relation to efficiency behaviors. Moreover, our results suggest that policies fostering pro-environmental habits could prove more successful than the ones promoting pro-environmental attitudes or awareness. These results have important implications for the design of environmental campaigns and rebate programs.
Highlights
The existence of behavioral spillovers from the promotion of pro-environmental attitudes and actual behaviors is widely acknowledged
We reported unconditional marginal effects (Table 4) accounting for the total potential effect on bottled water consumption that could be achieved through a change in each of the independent variables
The existence of behavioral spillovers has long been acknowledged in the literature on environmental policy
Summary
The existence of behavioral spillovers from the promotion of pro-environmental attitudes (or awareness) and actual behaviors is widely acknowledged. Value expression models of moral self-regulation predict that individuals tend to express their values in all their behavioral choices, independently of any past choice made [7,8]. Within this framework, moral consistency is predicted on the basis of a stable link between attitudes and behaviors [7] due to, among other reasons, the need for avoiding cognitive dissonance [1,9], and the wish to maintain a moral self-perception [10,11,12,13] or a social identity of being morally consistent [14,15,16]
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