Motivations to engage in pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) are often investigated using psychological theories such as the Theory of Reasoned Action. Though many psychological theories propose causal mechanisms operating at the level of the individual, studies often analyse cross-sectional data on psychological constructs with between-subject analyses. This approach is sensitive to confounding effects arising from differences between individuals, as opposed to capturing within-subject mechanisms. With pooled data from two surveys, we show that analysing relationships between motivations and intentions within subjects, across behaviours, can yield divergent results when compared to analyses between subjects, within specific behaviours, or using aggregate data. Specifically, whereas between-subject analyses suggested that individuals who perceived strong social pressure had only weakly stronger PEB-intentions, a within-subject analysis revealed that individuals were more inclined to perform PEBs for which they perceived social pressure. Likewise, economic gains were only in some cases related to PEB-intentions between-subjects, but individuals were more likely to perform PEBs that produced economic gains. We elaborate on what these diverging findings imply.

参与环保行为 (PEB) 的动机通常使用诸如理性行动理论之类的心理学理论进行调查。尽管许多心理学理论提出了在个体层面上起作用的因果机制，但研究通常通过主体间分析来分析有关心理结构的横断面数据。这种方法对个体之间差异引起的混杂效应很敏感，而不是捕捉主体内的机制。通过两项调查的汇总数据，我们表明，与受试者之间、特定行为内或使用汇总数据的分析相比，分析受试者内、跨行为的动机和意图之间的关系可能会产生不同的结果。具体来说，虽然主体间分析表明，感知到强烈社会压力的个体只有较弱的 PEB 意图，但主体内分析表明，个体更倾向于执行他们感知到社会压力的 PEB。同样，经济收益仅在某些情况下与受试者之间的 PEB 意图有关，但个人更有可能执行产生经济收益的 PEB。我们详细阐述了这些不同的发现意味着什么。