The attitude–behavior gap is not one-sided: Some do more for the environment than they believe

Abstract

This incentivized laboratory experiment ($N=99$) maps survey-measured environmental attitudes onto behavior elicited through an effort task, enabling the analysis of both negative attitude–behavior gaps (where attitudes exceed behavior) and positive gaps (where behavior exceeds attitudes). Environmental attitudes were measured using the New Ecological Paradigm Scale. Behavior was assessed through the Survivor Task, in which participants had to press the spacebar at least once every 20 seconds to keep the task running. As long as the task remained active, it generated donations for a local project aimed at improving the environment. The experiment revealed not only the commonly discussed negative attitude–behavior gap but also a similarly sized positive gap. Although the negative gap was slightly larger, participants with a positive gap contributed three times more to the total donation of €182. Given gender differences in attitudes, exploratory analysis showed that women exhibited smaller gaps than men, indicating a closer alignment between attitudes and behavior. This aligns with our additional finding: attitudes and behavior were positively correlated for women but negatively for men. The results challenge the common belief that most people fail to act on their attitudes. Since many act better than their attitudes predict, efforts to close the negative gap may fail if the positive gap is overlooked.