Hunt–Vitell’s General Theory of Marketing Ethics Predicts “Attitude-Behaviour” Gap in Pro-environmental Domain

The inconsistency between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, known as the “attitude-behaviour” gap, is exceptionally pronounced in scenarios associated with “green” choice. The current literature offers numerous explanations for the reasons behind the “attitude-behaviour” gap, however, the generalisability of these explanations is complex. In addition, the answer to the question of whether the gap occurs between attitudes and intentions, or intentions and behaviours is also unknown. In this study, we propose the moral dimension as a generalisable driver of the “attitude-behaviour” gap and investigate its effectiveness in predicting attitudes, pro-environmental intentions and subsequent behaviours. We do so by using Hunt–Vitell’s moral philosophy-based framework of ethical decision-making, which conceptualises morality as the central decision-making parameter. The results from 557 US MTurk participants revealed that the manipulation of moral dimensions, specifically deontology and teleology, impacted ethical evaluation of presented dilemmas, however, failed to translate into subsequent intentions and behaviours. This finding suggests (i) that the moral dimension has an effect in shaping attitudes toward environmental issues, and (ii) that gap occurs between attitudes and intentions rather than intentions and behaviours. Further investigation of what strengthens and/or overrides the effects of the moral dimension would help understand the reasons why moral attitudes do not always translate into subsequent intentions and behaviours in the pro-environmental domain

Conceptualising and Measuring Pro-Environmental Morality: A Review and Proposal of the Moral Expression Theory

Research into pro-environmental morality offers no consistent use of such terminology, suggesting that the concept is not well defined in the literature. To clarify the term, I review the studies investigating the relationship between morality and pro-environmental behaviour. Of particular focus is the metaphoric understanding of how humans relate to the words ‘environment’ vs. ‘nature’. Here, I propose that metaphoric relation to nature is the underexplored factor, which could improve the predictive capacity of climate change-related behaviour studies. By synthesising the current shortcomings of academic scholarship, I outline the theory of Moral Expression as conceptually new framework within which to re-interpret the studies in the sustainability domain. This paper suggests the directions for the refinement of the moral theory of eco-friendly behaviours and their measurement methods in order to close the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap

The effects of idealism and relativism on the moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and their relation to self-reported pro-environmental behaviours.

Many studies have demonstrated that moral philosophies, such as idealism and relativism, could be used as robust predictors of judgements and behaviours related to common moral issues, such as business ethics, unethical beliefs, workplace deviance, marketing practices, gambling, etc. However, little consideration has been given to using moral philosophies to predict environmentally (un)friendly attitudes and behaviours, which could also be classified as moral. In this study, we have assessed the impact of idealism and relativism using the Ethics Position Theory. We have tested its capacity to predict moral identity, moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and self-reported pro-environmental behaviours. The results from an online MTurk study of 432 US participants revealed that idealism had a significant impact on all the tested variables, but the case was different with relativism. Consistently with the findings of previous studies, we found relativism to be a strong predictor of moral identity and moral judgement of social issues. In contrast, relativism only weakly interacted with making moral judgements of environmental issues, and had no effects in predicting pro-environmental behaviours. These findings suggest that Ethics Position Theory could have a strong potential for defining moral differences between environmental attitudes and behaviours, capturing the moral drivers of an attitude-behaviour gap, which continuously stands as a barrier in motivating people to become more pro-environmental

The Theory of Planned Behaviour Doesn't Reveal 'Attitude-Behaviour' Gap? Contrasting the Effects of Moral Norms vs. Idealism and Relativism in Predicting Pro-Environmental Behaviours

The inconsistency between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, called the 'attitude-behaviour' gap, has been reported in many scenarios relating to sustainable actions. However, the reasons for it are not entirely clear. It has been proposed that the 'attitude-behaviour' gap is driven by the moral dimension whereby moral attitudes fail to translate into subsequent moral behaviours. If so, the lacking integration of moral dimension into the environmental domain serves as a generalisable factor to improve the accuracy of predicting pro-environmental behaviours. Hence, we aimed to explore (i) whether the addition of a moral element to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) shows the 'attitude-behaviour' gap and (ii) whether the ethics position questionnaire (EPQ) is a more suitable measure of morality within the TPB framework, as compared to that of moral norms. The results from 181 US MTurk participants disclosed that the addition of the moral element to the TPB framework did not reveal the presence of the 'attitude-behaviour' gap, despite both moral norms and idealism significantly predicting pro-environmental attitudes. The findings do not indicate whether moral norms or idealism should be used as a more accurate measure of morality within the TPB framework, although relativism was found to have no significant effects. Further investigation of why the moral element does not reveal the 'attitude-behaviour' gap within the TPB framework predicting pro-environmental behaviours would help understand the reasons why rational choice models tend to overestimate theoretical vs. real-life engagement with sustainability

The Theory of Planned Behaviour Doesn't Reveal 'Attitude-Behaviour' Gap? Contrasting the Effects of Moral Norms vs. Idealism and Relativism in Predicting Pro-Environmental Behaviours

The excel file includes variables for testing the effectiveness of  the Theory of planned Behaviour in  Pro-Environmental domain. The data are collected from 181 MTurk participants. The data includes the following variables:  Pro-environmental Behaviours, Pro-environmental Intentions, Attitudes, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioural Control, Moral Norms, Ethics position Questionnaire (EPQ) and Demographics.</p

Hunt-Vitell’s General Theory of Marketing Ethics Predicts ‘Attitude-Behaviour’ Gap in Pro-Environmental Domain

The inconsistency between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour, known as the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap, is not uncommon to ethical decision-making, however it’s exceptionally pronounced in scenarios associated with ‘green’ choice. Despite existing research offering numerous attempts to investigate the causes of the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap in the pro-environmental domain, it is surprising that the major factors driving the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap are still unknown. Therefore, we have grounded this study in Hunt-Vitell’s moral philosophy-based framework of ethical decision-making, which assumes morality as the central force impacting one’s behaviour and tested its effectiveness in predicting pro-environmental intentions vs. behaviours. The results from an online study of 612 MTurk participants from the US revealed that participants’ decision-making indeed depended on deontological and teleological framing of pro-environmental scenarios, and this in turn predicted the declining relationship between intention vs. behaviour. These findings suggest that morality is central to pro-environmental decision-making, and the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap is the result of the disintegrated effects of moral dimension. For this reason, strengthening the impact of morality could be sufficient for aligning intentions with behaviours and thus closing the ‘attitude-behaviour’ gap

ZMET investigation into the moral reasoning patterns of Extinction Rebellion Activists and the General Public: what does the trade-off between the sacred-sacred and sacred-secular values disclose about pro-environmental mindset?

Climate change issues are heavily moralised, however, subtle differences in the moral reasoning patterns existing in the public discourse have not been fully illuminated. To address this, we have employed a variant of Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique, which combines photo elicitation with environmental dilemmas that pit sacred-sacred and sacred-secular values against each other. The results from Extinction Rebellion activists and the general public reveal how groups internalise the value of nature and challenge the ecocentric-anthropocentric moral reasoning paradigm, disclosing how more subtle environmental value orientations are organised around the themes of destruction, short-sightedness, moral outrage, environmental movement, community, etc