A psychometric study of Pro-Environmental Behaviour measurement methods
(A2020-63818)

AUTHORS

Berre Deltomme, Ghent University; Karen Gorissen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Bert Weijters, Ghent University

KEYWORDS

Pro-Environmental Behaviour; Measurement; Convergent Validity

ABSTRACT

Research into Pro-Environmental Behaviour (PEB) has been gaining prominence, bringing along an increase in the number of methods used for measuring it. To further our understanding of the psychometric properties and correlational structure of these different measures, we administered several of them, including self-reports, experimental tasks and behavioural measures, to a sample of lab participants. While the correlations among self-report measures are medium to high, the correlations between self-reports on the one hand, and experimental tasks and behaviours on the other hand are statistically significant but small. We attribute this to differences in domain-specificity and environmental saliency: Whereas self-report measures are usually low in domain-specificity and high in environmental saliency, the experimental and behavioural measures are higher in domain-specificity and lower in environmental saliency.