Pro-Environmental Behavior and Rational Consumer Choice

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Pro-Environmental Behavior and Rational Consumer Choice 16 Second, given that not all of the required indicators are available for all individuals, we are faced with sub-samples that are smaller than the total sample. Moreover, these subsamples may be not representative. To check for this possibility, Figure 1 shows the frequencies of the ten life satisfaction categories for the complete sample and the various sub-samples in which the environment-related variables are available (see also Table B4 in Appendix B). The distributions within these sub-samples are very similar to those within the complete sample. We therefore consider the sub-samples in which the environmentrelated questions were asked as adequate representations of the distribution of life satisfaction. Figure 1: Frequency distribution of life satisfaction in total sample and sub-samples in which environment-related variables are available percent 20.00 18.00 16.00 14.00 12.00 10.00 8.00 6.00 4.00 2.00 0.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 life satisfaction Total Sample Green products Recycling Water conservation Priority WTP20 The next section addresses the question whether the apparent positive association between pro-environment consumption and subjective well-being from Table B3 is robust to the inclusion of income, country and time dummies, and the controls discussed above. 4 Empirical Results 4.1 Preliminaries The empirical analysis proceeds in several steps. Subsections 4.1 and 4.2 consider basic versions of model (4) from subsection 3.1 in which interactions of pro-environment consumption with individual and societal conditions are omitted. Subsection 4.3 introduces interactions with indicators of materialistic attitudes, thus checking the proposition that such attitudes may enhance choice distortions with respect to pro-environment consumption. Subsection 4.4 considers interactions with measures of education and familiarity with pro-environmental behaviors. All 5
Pro-Environmental Behavior and Rational Consumer Choice 17 The results from estimating the basic model versions are presented in Table 1 and, in more detail in Table B5. The first three ordered probit regressions (A-C) include the proenvironment behaviors one at a time whereas the fourth regression (D) includes them jointly. As a prelude, we first discuss the estimated life satisfaction thresholds and the socio-demographic controls (see Table B5). It can be stated that the estimated threshold values of the life satisfaction scale are, in general, fairly even spaced. An exception is provided by the fourth and the fifth threshold, which are markedly more distant from each other than are the other threshold values. These findings hold irrespective of which of the pro-environment variables are included. These results provide a justification for using an estimator for ordinal rather than cardinal dependent variables. We next address the results concerning the socio-demographic variables and per capita income. In spite of small numerical differences in coefficient values, the four regressions exhibit a common qualitative pattern: Life satisfaction is positively and significantly related to health, income, and the level of education. Females report higher life satisfaction than males, whereas age takes a U-shaped profile. Being married is associated with greater life satisfaction than being a single, whereas the opposite is true for being separated. Being retired, a housewife/houseman, or a student is associated with higher life satisfaction than working full time or part time, whereas being unemployed goes with considerably lower life satisfaction. Having university education is the strongest positive factor for life satisfaction, whereas being separated or unemployed are the strongest negative factors. Finally, in addition to individual income, higher per capita income is also associated with greater life satisfaction. All of these results hold while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across countries and time. Controlling, in addition, for pro-environmental attitudes (EnvPriority, WTP20) does not affect these qualitative results (see Table B6). Our results concerning the socio-demographic covariates of life satisfaction are consistent with common findings from the international literature (see Frey and Stutzer 2002 for a survey). This enhances our confidence in the adequacy of using data from the World Values Surveys in studying the relationship between pro-environment behaviors and subjective well-being. 4.2 Pro-Environment Consumption and Life Satisfaction In considering the relationship between life satisfaction and pro-environment consumption, it should be noted that all results pertinent to that relationship control for the covariates discussed in the preceding subsection. This implies, especially, that significant coefficients for the environmental variables do not implicitly measure positive life satisfaction effects of better health or higher personal or national income, even if pro-environment behaviors are correlated with these latter variables. Table 1 presents estimation results when attitude variables are disregarded. As regression A shows, consumption of environment-friendly goods goes along with significantly greater life satisfaction. The size of the coefficient is comparable to that of
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