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Journal of Environmental Psychology 1999 19, 1]19
0272]4944r99r010001 q 19$30.00r0
Q 1999 Academic Press
Article No. jevp.1998.0107, available online at http:rrwww.idealibrary.com on
ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDE AND ECOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR
FLORIAN G. KAISER1, SYBILLE WOLFING2 AND URS FUHRER3
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1 ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 2 Universitat Bern, Bern, Switzerland;
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3 Otto-von-Guericke-Universitat, Magdeburg, Germany
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Abstract
This paper establishes environmental attitude as a powerful predictor of ecological behaviour. Past studies
have failed in this enterprise because they did not consider three shortcomings that limit the predictive
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power of environmental attitude concepts: 1 the lack of a unified concept of attitude, 2 the lack of
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measurement correspondence between attitude and behaviour on a general level, and 3 the lack of
consideration of behaviour constraints beyond people’s control. Based on Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour,
the present study uses a unified concept of attitude and a probabilistic measurement approach to overcome
these shortcomings. Questionnaire data from members of two ideologically different Swiss transportation
associations are used. This study confirmed three measures as orthogonal dimensions by means of factor
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analysis: 1 environmental knowledge, 2 environmental values, and 3 ecological behaviour intention. One
other measure, general ecological behaviour, is established as a Rasch-scale that assesses behaviour by
considering the tendency to behave ecologically and the difficulties in carrying out the behaviours, which
depend on influences beyond people’s actual behaviour control. A structural equation model was used to
confirm the proposed model: environmental knowledge and environmental values explained 40 per cent of
the variance of ecological behaviour intension which, in turn, predicted 75 per cent of the variance of general
ecological behaviour.
Q 1999 Academic Press
Introduction1
Global environmental problems of shrinking natu-
ral resou