A General Measure of Ecological Behavior1

Measurement of ecological behavior across different domains has been troublesome. The present paper argues that the lack of agreement in measuring general ecological behavior may be due to the measurement approach that is commonly used. An ecological behavior measure should be grounded on a probabilistic measurement approach that takes the important features of ecological behavior into consideration. Such a measure was developed in a survey study of 445 members of 2 Swiss transportation associations. Three types of ecological behavior measures were included: a general measure, 3 multiple-item measures, and 3 single-item measures. Results are controlled for social desirability effects. Reliability, internal consistency, and validity scores indicate that a probabilistic measurement approach can measure general ecological behavior accurately and unidimensionally.

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