The REBL Score: A dynamic measure of pro-environmental behavior

The field of environmental behavior suffers from a lack of precise, reliable, and unidimensional measurement tools. Without tools that can measure changes over time, the drivers of behavior will remain opaque. To fill this critical gap in the methodological toolkit, we present a new Rasch-model based measurement tool. The Repeated Environmental Behaviors Latent (REBL) Scale contains 24 yes-or-no questions about behaviors carried out over the past week that are transformed into the REBL Score, a true-interval measure that captures a wide range of intensity of pro-environmental behavior preferences. Starting with a broad list of behaviors, we systematically reduced the scale using data from a series of nationally representative surveys to create a measure that is unidimensional, invariant, and reliable. We validate the scale against donations to a pro-environmental non-profit. We also provide open-source online tools to help researchers utilize the scale in research and applied settings.