What works for whom? Investigating adolescents' pro-environmental behaviors

Abstract

Pro-environmental behavior has been extensively studied using general models of predicting behavior; however, these models have very limited value in making inferences about individuals. To address this shortcoming, a person-oriented investigation of five pro-environmental behaviors differing in complexity was carried out using a clustering approach. A total of 863 adolescents (mean age 15.72 (SD = 1.1), 53.5% female) filled in the Big Five Inventory and measures of recycling, water conservation, electricity conservation, sustainable consumption, and sustainable transportation use based on an extended model of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). TPB models were investigated in empirically derived clusters of individuals that differ by their personality traits. The results suggest that individuals in different personality clusters could be reached effectively through different means when trying to promote pro-environmental behaviors and different pro-environmental behaviors should not be regarded as homogeneous.