CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Mannoni, Elisabetta |
|---|---|
| Title | Attitude-behavior relationship on the issue of environmental protection |
| Summary | This dissertation investigates the multifaceted relationship between environmental atti- tudes and pro-environmental behaviors. The first empirical chapter systematically examines the attitude-behavior gap across ten pro-environmental behaviors using the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) Environment IV data from 28 diverse countries. The results reveal substantial variability in behavioral consistency: environmentally concerned individuals consistently perform private actions such as recycling and product boycotts, yet significantly less frequently engage in public behaviors like protesting or joining environmental groups. The findings also corroborate the hypotheses that women are less likely to exhibit a gap for behaviors traditionally associated with gender stereotypes, while individuals from younger generations are less likely to do so for behaviors more evidently related to political participation. The second empirical chapter addresses a critical gap in the conceptualization and measurement of pro-environmental voting behavior by introducing an original measure that links individuals’ vote choices with expert-assessed party environmental stances and issue salience, based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) from 26 European countries. The analysis demonstrates that moral obligation significantly predicts pro-environmental voting, while collective response efficacy does not. It also identifies a persistent green gender gap and notable generational differences, indicating that younger, more educated voters more consistently align their environmental concerns with their electoral choices. The third empirical chapter utilizes a pre-registered survey experiment in Italy to explore the causal pathway between exposure to climate activism – specifically, protests targeting artwork – and environmental attitudes and behaviors. Contrary to common assumptions, the findings reveal predominantly null effects, suggesting that such disruptive activism neither substantially mobilizes public support nor provokes backlash. However, respondents’ prior attitudes toward protest tactics moderate responses, with sympathetic individuals showing modest increases in environmental engagement. Together, these studies contribute to theoretical and policy debates by providing nuanced insights into how environmental concern relates to pro-environmental behavior across different contexts and different types of behaviors. |
| Supervisor | Florian Weiler |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/mannoni_elisabetta.pdf |
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