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The influence of consumers' environmental beliefs and attitudes on energy saving behaviours
Journal article   Peer reviewed

The influence of consumers' environmental beliefs and attitudes on energy saving behaviours

David Gadenne, Bishnu Sharma, Don Kerr and Tim Smith
Energy policy, Vol.39(12), pp.7684-7694
01/12/2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2011.09.002

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Abstract

Attitudes Beliefs Consumer environmental behaviour
With a heightened focus on the concept of sustainability in the past few decades, government, business and individuals have become increasingly aware of the need to reduce our environmental footprint. Consequently there has been much research on consumer environmental behaviour, and the beliefs, norms and attitudes that influence this behaviour. In this article we develop a conceptual framework of consumer environmental behaviour and its antecedents, and test hypotheses within the framework by means of a survey of green consumers. The results show that general environmental beliefs do influence norms on environmental actions and prices, but only norms on price are correlated with environmental attitudes; both intrinsic and extrinsic environmental drivers together with social norms and community influence are associated with environmental attitudes, but cost barriers may have a negative influence. It was also found that there was a strong association between environmental attitudes and energy saving behaviours but the latter was not in any way influenced by government policies or subsidies. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.

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