Time to Divest?: Perceived Inconsistencies between universities’ environmental policy and actions reduce staff and students’ intentions to engage in pro-environmental behaviours

Many universities have environmental policy statements that are decidedly pro-environmental. However, some of their past actions may be perceived as inconsistent with these commitments. For example, one university previously invested £21 million in companies and intermediaries that produce fossil fuels, which are known to contribute to environmental devastation and global warming. In line with its policy statement, the university also promoted initiatives to encourage staff and students to adopt pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs). How might the perception of inconsistency between environmental policy and actual practice affect the efforts of members of the university community to enact individual PEBs? To address this question, in two studies we tested the hypothesis that university community members would be less likely to engage in PEBs if they were made aware of inconsistencies between environmental policy and actions. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that staff and students were less likely to say they intend to adopt PEBs in the coming week when told about inconsistencies, compared to a group told that university environmental policy and actions are consistent. Furthermore, there were a number of interactions with attitudes, knowledge, and situational factors in both studies, mostly showing fewer PEBs when policy was inconsistent. These results imply that perceived inconsistencies between environmental policy and actions could lead university staff and students to engage in fewer PEBs. Interpretation of statistical interactions further suggests that when individual attitudes are not strong, community members—especially students—reference the university’s inconsistency and decide to perform fewer PEBs than they might otherwise. Given increasing global awareness of environmental problems, this interpretation leads to the suggestion that universities should either consider adding caveats to their environmental policy statements or bring their actions in line with those policies (e.g., by divesting fossil fuel holdings—as this university ultimately did).