Going green in stages: Psychological processes behind intention formation and action for climate mitigation

Mitigating the climate crisis requires rapid societal change in favour of sustainability. Despite widespread concern, many consumers continue with high-emission activities. To assist behaviour change, it is useful to understand where in the process of change people currently are and what motivates the next step. In a preregistered study using a representative sample of adults (N = 1200), we measure ‘stage of change’ for transport and diet behaviours, and test the relationship with psychological predictors of proenvironmental behaviour. For both behaviours, people who intend to change worry more about climate change and feel more morally responsible to act than people who see no need to change. By contrast, acting on intentions is associated with holding a strong environmental identity. We find little predictive value of a broad range of other variables proposed in the literature, including social norms. We also find differences between the two behavioural domains. The results show the benefit of conceptualising behaviour change as a multistage process and the necessity of considering the behavioural domain when aiming to understand predictors of change.