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.