Responsibility as a Predictor of Ecological Behavior

Tested responsibility's role as a predictor of ecological behavior, addressing the following questions: (1) What makes people feel responsible for the environment? (2) Do people ascribe responsibility to themselves based on judgments about their causal influence, their intention to reach certain consequences, and their freedom to choose their behavior? and (3) Do people behave ecologically because they feel either morally or conventionally responsible? 445 members (aged 20-82 yrs) of 2 Swiss transportation associations completed a General Ecological Behavior Measure, a Social Desirability Scale, an adapted Guilt Scale, and 6 scales related to the theoretical differentiation of responsibility concepts. Structural equation analyses revealed that people apparently feel morally responsible rather than conventionally responsible for the environment. Guilt feelings explain 44% of the variance of these responsibility feelings, which, in turn, explain 45% of the variance of a persons deliberately made responsibility judgment, which, in turn, predicts 55% of the variance of a persons ecological behavior. The results suggest that if people feel guilty for what they do or fail to do, they also feel morally responsible for the environment.