The Limit DOES exist!...kind of...

In every research project, there are limitations that can potentially give skewed results.  The limitations in this project lie in the area of reliability.  In his study on environmental attitudes and actions, Bickman questioned people on their outlook on littering and then observed their behaviors when presented with an opportunity to pick up litter.  He concluded that there was a large gap between attitudes and behaviors (Bickman, 1972).  Because my research consists of student surveys and not observed behaviors, I fall under this conclusion. 

Another reliability issue is the inaccuracy and inflation of self-reported behaviors.  A study on the inaccuracies in self-reports was conducted in the 1980s.  Researchers in this study conducted surveys on energy use and compared them with actual utility bills.  The results attributed inaccuracies to two reasons:  1) the design of the survey, and 2) the desire of participants to give a socially desired response to keep up with the perceived social norm.  In the case of my research, the notion of sustainability is widely known.  Sustainable behavior is desirable is today’s society, but unfortunately, it is not always common.  Reporting behaviors that society desires instead of the reality of personal actions is a common problem among researchers (Warriner, McDougall, & Claxton, 1984).  To obtain accurate self-reports, two things must be accomplished.  The respondent must be able to answer correctly, meaning the survey must be well designed and the appropriate answer is available.  Second, the respondent must be willing to answer correctly and not give in to the social pressure.  Nonetheless, this study concluded that there was not a good reason for the respondents to “systematically distort their response”.  These results are also relevant for daily activities, which applies to my research on daily sustainable behavior (Warriner, McDougall, & Claxton, 1984).


Sample size also a limitation in my research.  While surveying the NSCS offers a controlled and reliable audience, it is a very limited sample of the general student population.  It focus on specific elite group of students and may be more or less likely to perform a behavior based on this affiliation.  

Check Yes or No

The best practices report was used to design a survey.  This process is the quantitative portion of my research and will operationalize the variables.  The survey will question a sample of students at TAMU and CU about their current green practices and behaviors as well as their attitudes toward the best practices report.  While trying to decide how to evaluate the survey results I came across Michael Tarrant's study on the five different evaluation scales for attitude behavior consistency.  According to the results of his study, the Awareness of Consequences (AC) scale would be most appropriate for my research.  It is best for determining results for general populations.  While this population is specifically higher educated, the generality applies to the use of both genders as a subject (Tarrant, 1997).  The results will be used to determine a current level of typical green behavior for students on the different campuses.  It will also establish a level of compromise needed between the best practices and students’ attitudes to develop green practices that are unique to the culture at Texas A&M.  These practices will help the campus redefine a student’s typical green behavior and level of environmental responsibility. 

Incentive for Survey

The research grants I have received from the TAMU Undergraduate Research Scholars Program and TAMU College of Architecture are used as an incentive for the target audience to take the survey.  All students at the selected schools are eligible to participate in the survey, but the incentive is offered to the selected national organizations at the schools.  If the organizations participate, I will donate a sum of money to them.  Organizations will be used instead of individual students because it is a more controlled audience and it narrows the scope of my research.  The organization must be a national organization with an active branch at both selected schools.  The National Society of Collegiate Scholars has active chapters at both TAMU and CU.  It also has a range of ages and majors.  For these reasons, I will use the NSCS as my surveyed organizations.

Attitude vs. Behavior

Attitude has been the subject of research for social psychologist for many years.  Over the years, many different definitions of attitude are considered.  For the purpose of my project, attitude is considered as “a general latent disposition which underlies affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses to an attitude object” (Ajzen, 2005).  In other words, an attitude is a personal outlook that is driven by thoughts about the subject, feelings towards the subject, and intentions toward the subject.  

Attitude behavior consistency is the correspondence between declarations and actions.  Social psychologists have discarded the idea of a clear-cut connection between attitude and behavior (Byrka, 2009).  In their book Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Behavior, Ajzen and Fishbein discuss the idea that intention is the driving determinant in a person’s behavior.  They describe intention as

a function of two basic determinants, one personal in nature and the other reflecting social influence.  The personal factor is the individual’s positive or negative evaluation of performing the behavior.  The second determinant of intention is the person’s perception of the social pressures put on him to perform or not to perform the behavior in question (1980).

People will act upon an intention if they determine it as positive and believe “important others think they should perform it” (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). 

Campbell’s paradigm is another major theory in attitude behavior studies.  Katarzyna Byrka discusses his theory in her thesis on Attitude behavior consistency.  According to Byrka, Campbell subscribed the idea to situational limitations such as social norms create different settings for behaviors.  In his theory, the behavior’s difficulty is determined by to “total cost of performance” (Byrka, 2009).

In 1997 a project titled "The Demographics of Recycling and the Structure of Environmental Behavior" was conducted.  This project showed that “a large number of people will take pro-environmental actions is they have access to a convenient way of doing so”.  I hypothesize that redefining a norm and creating a space that is more conducive to performing sustainable actions will result in more environmentally responsible behaviors.   In my research, I will test this by conducting a survey based on the aforementioned areas of sustainability.  The results determine the driving determinant in student attitude-behavior consistency (or inconsistency) on campus.  

Crisis Confirmed.

While re-vamping the introduction to my thesis, I came across the book Environmentalism: A Global History written by R. Guha.  This book is a great source of information how we arrive at our current environmental state.  A line in this book at really got my attention was: “Environmentalism must be viewed as a social program”.  My research is showing this more and more.  We need to come together as a society and work together to solve the environmental problems that we have created. Below are a few passages, if you like them, go check out the book!  It's at Evans Library and it's really good!

The first wave of environmentalism is a response to industrialization, while the second is an intellectual response that gained “shape and force” by public support and transformed into a movement. 


The “first wave” followed the industrial revolution step by step.  “The industrialization of the world dramatically altered the natural world through new methods of resource extraction, production, and transportation.”  Nature was being use and abused more than ever.  “Simultaneously, advances in medical technology led to a steady increase in human populations.  More humans producing more and consuming more led axiomatically to greater pollution and habitat degradation.  The pace of environmental destruction greatly accelerated.  Nature became a source of cheap raw material as well as a sink for dumping the ever-growing appetite of industry decimated forests and wild-lands.  New and dangerous chemicals were excreted into rivers and the atmosphere.”

“Environmental problems were certainly not unknown in the past, but possibly for the first time in human history there [is] now the perception of an environmental crisis” 

To walk or not to walk.

College is the time in a young adult’s life that behaviors and attitudes are developed.  This makes the information and activities they take part in vital to their development, especially their active living development.  The article in the Journal of American College Health by Susan B. Sisson, PhD; James J. McClain, PhD; Catrine Tudor-Locke, PhD focuses on walkability on college campuses.  It compares college campuses to high density communities and analyzes the distance walked and the amount of steps students take in a week.  These statistics were then compared to the built environment of two college campuses, ASU-Tempe and ASU- Polytechnic.  The Tempe campus has many destinations within walking distance, has sidewalks on every street, and is built on a grid that isolates vehicle traffic.  While the Polytechnic campus has fewer walkable destinations, has very few sidewalks, and is laid out along a road with lots of vehicle traffic.  The results showed that the built environment of the ASU Tempe campus is more conducive to pedestrian behavior than the Polytechnic campus.  The results also showed walking for transportation helps students to meet recommended daily physical activity levels.

This article applies to the transportation part of my research.  If we can create a campus that encourages walking and/or using sustainable transportation (ie. bikes and buses), TAMU would benefit physically and environmentally.