Downward social comparison in explaining pro-environmental attitude-sustainable consumption behavior gap

Purpose While consumers are increasingly concerned about the environment and commit themselves to environmental protection, they are still reluctant to act. This phenomenon, to date, has remained a puzzle and gained much attention from practitioners and researchers. As a contribution to the understanding of the phenomenon, this study aims to examine the role of downward social comparison as an explanation for the inconsistency of the relationships between two types of pro-environmental attitudes, namely attitudes toward the environment and attitudes toward sustainable consumption, and two sustainable consumption behaviors including electricity-saving behavior and unneeded consumption reduction. Design/methodology/approach Hierarchical multiple regressions were employed to test the hypotheses with survey data from 381 consumers in a large city in a Southeast Asian country. Findings The regression results support our expectation that downward social comparison negatively moderates the relationships between the two attitude variables and the two sustainable consumption behaviors. Originality/value Our findings provide some insights into the complexity of the attitude-behavior relationship and offer some practical recommendations for governments and policymakers in designing more effective behavioral interventions for the sustainability of human society.