Restricting Our Consumption of Material Goods: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

Abstract

Despite the increasing number of studies investigating environmentally friendly behavior, relatively little research has examined the attitudes, subjective norms, perceived ability, and intentions of individuals to restrict their consumption. The current study validated a new measure of consumption restriction developed from the Theory of Planned Behavior. A total of 243 college-aged students completed the Consumption Restriction Questionnaire (CRQ), in addition to measures of greed, frugality, materialism, and consumption. Results confirmed the importance of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control as determinants of both intentions to restrict consumption in addition to actual consumption, and also demonstrated the superiority of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control in predicting consumption related to individual differences in greed, frugality and materialism. However, intentions to restrict consumption were modest. Results have implications for both our understanding of environmentally friendly behavior, as well as for the targets that interventions designed to restrict our consumption should address.