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The effects of social desirability on self-reported environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour

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Abstract

There are several claims in the literature that social desirability concerns affect people’s response to self-reported measures of environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. However, only a few empirical studies have indirectly evaluated the impact of social desirability on environmental issues measures, and those who did have found only a low impact. This article describes two studies that explicitly address whether socially desirable responding has direct and moderating effects on self-reported environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. Results from correlational and moderated multiple regression analyses from both studies showed that social desirability had only a weak direct effect on environmental attitudes (but not ecological behaviour), and had no moderating effect on the environmental attitudes–ecological behaviour relationship. Implications of these findings for research on environmental issues are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour are standard terms in psychology. Environmental attitudes is employed here to refer to a “psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating perceptions of or beliefs regarding the natural environment, including factors affecting its quality, with some degree of favour or disfavour” (Milfont 2007, p. 12). Ecological behaviour is employed here to refer to actions contributing to environmental preservation and/or conservation (Axelrod and Lehman 1993; Kaiser and Fuhler 2003).

  2. As correctly pointed by one anonymous reviewer, there are also other factors that may explain the attitude–behaviour gap, such as technological or policy barriers, and lack of effective knowledge or resources. Assuming that people are genuine in their self-reported environmental attitudes, these other factors can also limit the translation of environmental attitudes into ecological behaviour.

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Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Chris Sibley and Lucy Hawcroft for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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  1. Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research, School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand

    Taciano L. Milfont

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Correspondence to Taciano L. Milfont.

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Milfont, T.L. The effects of social desirability on self-reported environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. Environmentalist 29, 263–269 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-008-9192-2

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