The Gap Between Self-reported and Actual Contributions to Climate Change Mitigation in US Residents

Farjam, Mike, and Giangiacomo Bravo. 2020. “The Gap Between Self-reported and Actual Contributions to Climate Change Mitigation in US Residents.” SocArXiv. June 11. doi:10.31235/osf.io/rqd4s

Abstract: Surveys measures of environmental concern are know to only weakly predict self-reported environmental behaviour. In addition, self-reported and actual behaviour may not match in empirical settings. To better explore the relation among these variables and the political stance of participants, we ran an online experiment with 805 US residents. Four key variables – environmental concern, self -reported environmental behaviour, observed environmental behaviour (in the form of carbon compensation), and political attitudes – were measured and their interactions in promoting pro-environment behaviour were analysed. We found that self-reported measures hardly held any correlation with real behaviour and that political attitudes mainly predicted self-reported measures, not real environmental behaviour.