The Measurement of Pro-Environmental Behavior: convergent validity and stability of existing measurements
(A2022-106556)

AUTHORS

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

ABSTRACT

Over the last years, the increased interest of scholars in ‘Pro-Environmental Behavior’ (PEB), has led to an accumulation of new measures of the construct. While self-report scales are still dominant in the field, alternative measures like simulated choice tasks and observational measures are used interchangeably to measure PEB. However, up to now it remained unclear how reliable and valid (including not being contaminated by Socially Desirable Responding) these alternative measures of PEB are. We conducted two studies to gain insight in their psychometric properties. In the first study, the convergent validity was explored. The results show that introspective self-reports show convergent validity with each other, but that this is not the case for any of the other measures. In the second study, we tested the stability of the measures by administering them twice to the same sample with a one-month time interval. All measures show acceptable stability, with the self-reports being most stable. The results point to some important differences between the measures that could impact the measurement and its meaning such as their domain-specificity and the saliency of the environmental attribute.