Understanding environmental behaviour; An explorative study between the home and holiday context

The performance of nearly all environmental behaviour is found to be influenced by a number of demographic, internal (motivational) and external (situational) factors. This thesis aims to understand these factors and the underlying motivations and barriers for participating in sustainable daily behaviour. Both in the home and holiday context. Importance is placed on identifying and understanding spillover effects between these two different geographical contexts. In this research, results are presented that are drawn from an extensive theoretical framework and qualitative analysis. The findings confirm that environmental behaviour differs greatly between individuals and is determined by a variety of demographic, internal and external factors. In this thesis two kinds of environmental behaviour were questioned; low level behaviour, such as recycling or separate waste, and high level behaviour, which requires making bigger lifestyle sacrifices. These different kinds of behaviour show diverse underlying motives in the two different contexts. Most apparent findings show that, across contexts, the internal factor habit is the most consistent determinant. This paper argues that low level behaviour adopted in the home context is, in almost all cases, transferred to the holiday context. The main factor that explains this spillover effect is not based on environmental concern but on internal motivation. High level behaviour shows significantly less spillover. This also shows that, next to the context and perceived contribution, the amount of perceived effort determines any spillover effects between the different contexts. Even though habit is discovered as a main determinant of spillover effects, this cannot be used to predict behaviour in the holiday context without thoughtful consideration. Habit may only be used to indicate low level behaviour. Often, perception ultimately affects the engagement in environmental behaviour, more than habit. Furthermore, from a governmental perspective this paper offers new insights, showing that campaigns or policies aimed at changing or promoting individual behaviour in the holiday context is difficult because the outcomes show the need for a context and behaviour-specific approach. Therefore, these should be different from campaigns aimed at changing or promoting sustainable behaviour exclusively in the home context