Why pro-environmental attitudes don’t always translate in behavior: Exploring the role of moral disengagement

Research indicates a significant gap between the individual’s pro-environmental attitudes and actual behavior. To explain this gap, the present paper integrates prominent models of ecological behavior with theories of cognitive dissonance and moral disengagement into the new Behavior Attitude Alignment Model (BAAM). This model suggests that behavioral barriers can create an inconsistency between pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, leading to negative affect. Individuals may resolve this negative affect either by acting more pro-environmentally or by adjusting their attitudes through moral disengagement. Two studies were conducted to test this extended model. The first study (n = 256) focused on behaviors with varying behavioral barriers (eating less meat vs. recycling), while the second study (n = 188) manipulated behavioral barriers for sustainable consumption with a product choice task. The results from both studies indicate that higher behavioral barriers induce moral disengagement, which negatively affects behavioral attitudes, leading to less pro-environmental behavior. However, barriers had no significant effect on negative affect. These findings suggest that moral disengagement plays a crucial role in explaining pro-environmental behavior and offers new insights for developing interventions to counteract this process. Consequently, the present work lays the groundwork for identifying new strategies to close the attitude-behavior gap, and therefore contributes to a more sustainable future.