Journal of Empirical Generalisations in Marketing Science, Volume Three, 1998
Page 42
Environmental Attitude – Behaviour
Correlations in 21 Countries
Malcolm Wright and Babs Klÿn
Abstract
We used data from the International Social Survey Program to investigatethe correlation
between ‘green’ attitudes and ‘green’ consumption behaviours in 21 different countries.
Despite avoiding the methodological problems often blamed for poor attitude-behaviour
correlations, we found lower correlations than reported in a recent meta-analysis of this
subject. Furthermore, the correlations varied considerably between countries, and in some
countries were not significant at all. These results suggest that previous findings on
attitude-behaviour correlations are not generalisable to all countries, and that attitudes
seldom explain more than 10% of the variance in behaviour.
Malcolm Wright is a Senior Research Associate at the Marketing Science Centre,
University of South Australia. Babs Klÿn is a Trade Remedies officer at the New Zealand
Ministry of Commerce; at the time of the research she was an Assistant Lecturer in the
Marketing Department at Massey University.
The authors would like to thank Phil Gendall for access to the ISSP data and helpful
comments on an earlier version of this paper, Esther Chong and Erica Riebe for reviewing
the final draft of this paper, and the JEMS reviewers.
Correspondence should be addressed to Malcolm Wright at:
Marketing Science Centre
City West Campus, University of South Australia
North Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000
AUSTRALIA
Email: Malcolm.Wright@msc.unisa.edu.au
Journal of Empirical Generalisations in Marketing Science, Volume Three, 1998
Page 43
Introduction
Much consumer and market research is based on the assumption that knowledge of
consumer attitudes will help to predict consumer behaviour. This is, in fact, not as
straightforward as it might seem. For over sixty years the strength and direction of the
link between attitudes and behaviour has been subject to critical examination (eg. La P