Pro-Environmental Behavior and Rational Consumer Choice

Pro-Environmental Behavior and Rational Consumer Choice 20
We thus find that pro-environment behaviors are associated with greater subjective wellbeing,
even when we control for differences concerning attitudes towards the environment.
The coefficients are of sizeable magnitude. Using the coefficient of (un)employment as a
benchmark, the coefficients of the pro-environment behaviors amount to about one fourth.
The coefficient is largest in the case of consuming green products and smallest in the case
of water conservation.
Against the background of our theoretical framework, significant positive coefficients
suggest that pro-environment consumption is less than individually rational. This applies
particularly with respect to green products and less so with respect to recycling and water
conservation. The latter finding is consistent with the idea that intrinsic motives may be
more important in the case of buying green products than with respect to recycling and
water conservation, as financial considerations may play a role in these latter cases.
4.3 Distorted Choice and Materialistic Values
One of the propositions discussed in section 2 states that more materialistically oriented
individuals may be subject to greater choice distortions and utility losses than less
materialistically oriented persons. We check this proposition by means of the following
attitude question from the World Value Surveys:
“People sometimes talk about what the aims of this country should be for the next ten
years. On this card are listed some of the goals which different people would give top
priority. Would you please say which one of these you, yourself, consider the most
important? First choice:
• A high level of economic growth
• Strong defence forces
• People have more say about how things are done
• Trying to make our cities and countryside more beautiful”
We call this item Materialism and code it as follows: Materialism = 1 if “A high level of
economic growth” is the respondent’s first choice and Materialism = 0 if it is not the first
choice.
We include Materialism in the life satisfaction equation both as a separate explanatory
variable and as an interaction term with our pro-environment behaviors. In doing so, we
continue to include the attitude variables from Table 2. The results are displayed in Table
3.