M APPING C HANGES IN A TTITUDES & B EHAVIOURS R EGARDING R ESPONSIBLE L IVING ”Does involvement in education for responsible living increase understanding of, and change attitudes towards sustainable consumption?” Mariana Calheiros Lobo, Declan Doyle, Luis Cunha Institute of Technology Carlow, Ireland Faculdade de Ciencias da Universidade do Porto, Portugal Paris 2015

Objective Responsible living relies on fundamental shifts in the attitudes and behaviours of individuals towards the environment and the natural world. This research represents the output from a research project undertaken by WG3 to compare certain attitudes and behaviours of PERL / CCN members and non members of PERL / CCN The work focused on the growing acceptance of the need to live more responsibly which is not necessarily reflected in behaviour change. We wanted to find out whether being part of the PERL community resulted in behaviour change. Mapping Changes in Attitudes and Behaviours April 2014

PRO- ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOUR ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN INDIVIDUALITY eg laziness, wrong person, lack of interest RESPONSIBILITY eg lack of efficacy, no need, lack of trust, dont own property PRACTICALITY eg lack of time / money, lack of information, lack of facilities, storage difficulties, physically unable V ALUE A CTION G AP The value-action gap is the gap that can occur when the values or attitudes of an individual do not correlate to his or her actions The aim of Blake’s (1999) research was to highlighting the value-action gap by asking the respondents themselves to identify the barriers that prevented them from carrying out particular environmental actions, despite a general concern for the environment. 3 categories of obstacles were identified; individuality, responsibility, practicality Mapping Changes in Attitudes and Behaviours March 2015

P ersonal Inputs Attitudes Knowledge (including PERL) Self Identity (including Norms, Values & Motivation Demographics E nvironmental & Socio economic barriers Lifestyle Environmental Accessibility (including infrastructure) Political / Economic factors R easoned Intentions Emotional Evaluation L iving Outputs Behavioural change Private Behaviour Behaviour in organisations / groups O UR C ONCEPTUAL F RAMEWORK Mapping Changes in Attitudes and Behaviours March 2015 Using concepts from models by Laroche (2001), Blake (1999) and Ajzen (2006)” a conceptual framework for the Research was proposed. This model was also based on a ‘focus group’ of WG3 at the beginning of the Project.

M ETHODOLOGY Online survey using the PERL and CCN database of members. Asking PERL members to forward questionnaire to non-members for completion Quantitative Questionnaire based on: – European Commission’s “Attitudes of European citizens towards the Environment” (2008), – Scottish government survey “Scottish Attitude and behaviour survey” (2008) and supplemented by questions based on the models proposed by: – Blake (1999) “barriers between environmental concern and action” – Kim et al. (2013) “Anticipated emotion in consumers’ intentions to select eco-friendly restaurants: Augmenting the theory of planned behaviour” Through the application of a Principle Component Analysis, latent factors were drawn from the original items, for each of the dimensions and their evaluation: General Attitudes, Attitudes towards the Environment, Self Identity, Perceived Behaviour, Perceived Behavioural change, Barriers and Emotions. Mapping Changes in Attitudes and Behaviours March 2015

I NVOLVEMENT IN PERL Involvement level%N Thematic group14.98%37 Work group25.51%63 Steering group4.05%10 Consultant group8.91%22 Mapping Changes in Attitudes and Behaviours March valid respondents – 40% PERL members for 60% non-members of PERL

Results Significant differences between PERL members and non-members were discovered for 6 variables Knowledge, Behaviour – lower impact of consumption, Behaviour – social engagement, Behaviour – means of transportation Behavioural change – impact of transportation Personal constraints on pro- environmental behaviour Mapping Changes in Attitudes and Behaviours April 2014

C ONCLUSION Members of the CCN / PERL network exhibited stronger pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours and reported a greater level of knowledge of environmental issues than non-PERL respondents It can be concluded that membership of a network with the goals of PERL is positively correlated with more positive attitudes and behaviours towards responsible living even taking into account individuals socio economic background Further research should be conducted to focus on the background of each member to deepen the strength of the results. 57 respondents agreed to participate in a qualitative follow up interview to be conducted at some future stage. Mapping Changes in Attitudes and Behaviours March 2015