Green lifestyles and subjective well-being: More about self-image than actual behavior?

- Green lifestyle is positively related to subjective well-being in UKHLS data set.
- Specific pro-environmental behaviors not robustly related to subjective well-being.
- Self-image influences green behavior index.
- Discrepancy between self-image and behavior is used to estimate value-action gap.
- Value-action gap ranges from 2% to 65% depending on category of green behavior.

Does environmentally-friendly behavior necessarily imply sacrifice? In the metric of subjective well-being, research has shown that green behavior and sustainable consumption are positively related to life satisfaction. We extend this research analyzing UKHLS household panel data for Great Britain, showing that this boost in life satisfaction is mostly due to self-image (i.e. one's own assessment of how environmentally-friendly one's behavior is) but not due to concrete pro-environmental behaviors such as conserving water, recycling and so on. We further show that green self-image increases the extent and intensity of green behavior yet even the greenest (self-identified) individuals do not consistently exhibit all pro-environmental behaviors. By this, our data can be used to assess the varying extent of a value-action gap for different pro-environmental behaviors for our sample.