Assessing the impact of socio-economic variables on the sustainabilty intention-behaviour gap

Abstract

: This paper studied the effect of socio-economic variables on the Intention-Behaviour gap, regarding sustainable consumer behaviour. To study these effects, two studies were carried out. One which uses a preview of an ISSP dataset on environmental attitudes and behaviour, and the second study was based on data gathered through a survey created for this paper. The results for the first study were in line with the hypotheses, with most variables having a significant effect on sustainable behaviour. An interaction term between sustainable intention and respondent age had a significant negative relation, while the term between sustainable intention and respondent sex had no significant relation. Curiously, perceived behavioural control had a negative relation with behaviour. The second study, on the contrary, finds mostly insignificant relations between the socio-economic variables and sustainable actions. An interaction term between sustainable opinion and age category significantly influences behavior. Study 2 also divided sustainability into social and environmental aspects and found that environmental opinion proved to be a stronger determinant of sustainable behaviour than opinion on sustainability. Implications of the results, limitations of the studies, and future topics of research are discussed in the paper.