Browsing by Subject "Environmental attitudes"

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Measuring adolescents’ level of interest in nature: A promising psychological factor facilitating nature protection
(2023) Neurohr, Anna-Lena; Pasch, Nadine; Otto, Siegmar; Möller, Andrea
Studies indicate that young people are more prepared to engage in pro-environmental behavior if they are interested in nature and recognize it as worthy of protection. However, a reliable instrument to measure adolescents’ interest in nature is still lacking. Therefore, we developed a new metric, the Scale of Interest in Nature (SIN). It consists of 18 items, is based on Item-Response-Theory and was validated using the known group approach (N = 351 adolescents). Results indicate that adolescents’ interest in nature correlates positively with their connection with nature, their intention to preserve nature and engagement in pro-environmental activities in their free time. Bivariate Pearson correlations between the SIN and the Connectedness to Nature Scale (INS), as well as the Environmental Values model (2-MEV) demonstrated the scale’s construct validity. Hence, the SIN scale provides an economical way to measure adolescents’ interest in nature in research contexts or environmental and sustainability education settings.
Spillover in sustainable consumer behavior: a matter of commitment
(2025) Henn, Laura; Kaiser, Florian G.; Adler, Maximilian; Elf, Patrick; Gatersleben, Birgitta; Henn, Laura; University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Kaiser, Florian G.; Otto‐von‐Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany; Adler, Maximilian; Otto‐von‐Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany; Elf, Patrick; Middlesex University, London, UK; Gatersleben, Birgitta; University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Consumers express their commitment to environmental protection by engaging in a variety of environmentally protective behaviors. We thus suggest that strengthening consumers' commitment to environmental protection will cause behavioral spillover, which is the joint change in multiple environmentally protective behaviors. This idea differs from other spillover notions that draw on psychological processes that follow a change in a specific behavior. By reanalyzing data from a pre‐post treatment‐control quasi‐field experiment with customers of a retail company in which one group was exposed to a multiple‐component intervention over the course of 8 months, whereas the other was not, we corroborated a significant commitment gain in the experimental group ( n = 81) that did not occur in the control group ( n = 152). This commitment gain manifested in the expected spillover effect that mirrored the Rasch‐model‐implied likelihood gains in increasingly favorable behavioral expressions of people's commitment to environmental protection. This research complements existing models of behavioral spillover by providing theoretical and empirical arguments that strengthening consumers' commitment to environmental protection can result in spillover. In practical terms, focusing on people's commitment to environmental protection could thus be a promising avenue for directly promoting sustainable lifestyles.