Justifying environmentally significant behavior choices: An American-Hungarian cross-cultural comparison

• NEP has positive influence on reported pro-environmental behavior both in a direct and indirect way.
• NEP influences perceived significance of pro-environmental contributions positively.
• Reported pro-environmental behavior of Americans was negatively affected by false justifications.
• Hungarians’ justification of non-behavior does not assist environmentally unfriendly deeds.

This study examined the function held by justification of environmentally harmful behavior in the relationship between environmental attitudes and environmental behavior. We tested this function in a cross-cultural context hypothesizing culture-dependent relationship between justification and reported behavior. One-hundred American and 100 Hungarian middle class participants responded to the New Environmental Paradigm scale (NEP), the General Ecological Behavior scale (GEB), and self-developed scales for measuring perceived criticality of environmentally significant behaviors and justification for non-behavior. Environmental attitudes and reported pro-environmental behavior were positively correlated irrespective of culture. However, in case of Americans justification appeared to be an organic element of an array beginning with attitudes and ending at behavior, while Hungarians justified non-behavior independently of pro-environmental activities, influenced only by pro-environmental attitudes. Furthermore we observed higher scores on justification, NEP, and GEB scales among Hungarians. Gender differences appeared only among Americans where women showed more environmental concern than men.