How responsible a person feels for the environment is a promising predictor
of that person's ecological behaviour. One difficulty of using responsibil
ity feelings as a predictor is that people can feel either morally or conve
ntionally responsible. Moral responsibility feelings depend on a person's s
elf-ascribed responsibility (i.e. a deliberate responsibility judgement) an
d guilt feelings. Conventional responsibility feelings depend on the social
expectations a person is aware of and his or her readiness to fulfill thes
e expectations. In a survey study of 445 members of two Swiss transportatio
n associations, the relative influence of these distinguishable responsibil
ity concepts on ecological behaviour was assessed.
Structural equation analyses revealed that people apparently feel morally r
esponsible rather than conventionally responsible for the environment. Guil
t feelings explain 44 per cent of the variance of these responsibility feel
ings, which, in turn, explain 45 per cent of the variance of a person's del
iberately made responsibility judgement, which, in turn, predicts 55 per ce
nt of the variance of a person's ecological behaviour. These results sugges
t that if people feel guilty for what they do or fail to do, they also feel
morally responsible for the environment. This promotes their self-ascripti
on of responsibility and it is this judgement that predicts a considerable
portion of a person's ecological behaviour. (C) 1999 Academic Press.