The link between environmental attitudes and energy consumption behavior

•This study matches real electricity use of 612 households with their attitudes to several environmental issues.•Attitudes are obtained by face-to-face interviews with 612 households; electricity consumption is obtained from billing records.•Pro-environmental attitudes are significantly associated with lower energy consumption.

This paper examines the connection between household environmental attitudes and real energy consumption behavior using a data set of electricity use by 612 households in Wyoming, USA, along with survey on their opinions, perceptions, and attitudes to several environmental issues. The statistical analysis suggests that attitudes about environmental issues are associated with lower energy consumption. Environmentally concerned households tend to be more conservative on energy use. Contrary to the rather mixed results reported by previous studies, these results suggest that the link between household environmental attitudes and patterns of energy consumption is relatively strong.