In this research, we propose that the notorious attitude-behavior gap—the notion that people profess attitudes without taking real actions—might also stem from ignoring the fact that manifest behavior typically involves costs (i.e., personal resources such as time, money, exertion). In two quasi-field experiments with convenience samples (N₁ = 396; N₂ = 252), we demonstrate that the people who performed increasingly costly behavior professed progressively stronger attitudes. Our findings suggest that the costs that obstruct behavior must be offset by attitudes before behavior can manifest itself. Thus, there is a need to stop confusing weak attitude-behavior correlations with the behavioral irrelevance of attitudes. To avoid underestimating the importance of people's attitudes concerning environmental protection, the strength of attitudes relative to the associated behavioral costs must be considered.

在这项研究中，我们提出臭名昭著的态度-行为差距——即人们表达态度而不采取实际行动的观念——也可能源于忽视了这样一个事实，即表现行为通常涉及成本（即个人资源，如时间、金钱、努力）。在使用便利样本的两个准现场实验中（N ₁  = 396；N ₂ = 252），我们证明了那些执行成本越来越高的行为的人表现出越来越强的态度。我们的研究结果表明，在行为表现出来之前，阻碍行为的成本必须被态度抵消。因此，有必要停止将微弱的态度-行为相关性与态度的行为无关性混淆。为了避免低估人们对环境保护态度的重要性，必须考虑与相关行为成本相关的态度强度。