Mat Kahn and Eric Morris, two of the very smart peoples at UCLA, have published a very cool paper on the coherence between attitudes and behavior among environmentalists. He discusses the paper and provides a link on his blog.
Kahn, Matt and E. Morris. 2009. Walking the Walk: The Association Between Community Environmentalism and Green Travel Behavior.
Forthcoming in the Journal of the American Planning Association.
Every time Matt publishes a paper, it’s a paper I wish I’d written. I have written about a group that is suspected to be indifferent to the environment–truckers–along with CJ Brodrick and Sue Spivey at James Madison University. You can find that manuscript here. The bottom line is that truckers have two major groups–employee truckers and owner-operators, and the employee truckers do have pro-environmental attitudes. Owner-operators are, unsurprisingly, more driven by costs, which in the case of idle reduction technology, aligns with environmental interests. But capital markets are imperfect and it takes some time for the technology in the owner operator fleet to change over.
Schweitzer,L., Brodrick, C-J, , and S.Spivey. 2008. “Truck Driver Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: An Exploratory Analysis.” Transportation Research Part D. 13 (3): Available online at: doi:10.1016/j.trd.2007.11.001.