Perceptions of behaviors that cause and mitigate global warming and intentions to perform these behaviors

Individual household and travel behaviors represent a sizeable contribution to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. This paper investigates people's knowledge of these behaviors and perceptions of these behaviors' impact in causing and mitigating climate change. In the present study, a sample of college students were asked to list the behaviors they perform that cause global warming (GW) and the behaviors they could perform to mitigate GW, to rate the impact of the behaviors in terms of their effect on causing or mitigating GW, and to rate their intention to perform each of the behaviors. Results revealed that this sample was well aware of the effect of driving on GW. However, participants underestimated the relative impact of adjusting the thermostat and eating meat on GW and overestimated the impact of littering on causing GW. Although knowledge about GW-mitigating behaviors was not consistently related to behavioral intention, belief that a behavior mitigated GW (whether accurate or not) was strongly related to intention to perform that behavior. Specifically, correlations between belief in the mitigating potential of a behavior and intention were relatively high for adjusting the thermostat, reducing meat consumption, and several behaviors that do not mitigate GW, but were relatively low for reducing driving and not littering. Practical implications and comparisons with previous literature are discussed.

► We examined perceptions of and intention to perform global warming (GW) - related behaviors.
► Certain misperceptions characterized perceptions of behaviors' effects on GW.
► Knowledge of GW-mitigating behaviors did not relate to intention to perform specific behaviors.
► Belief that a behavior mitigates GW strongly correlated with intention to perform the behavior.