Walking the Walk: Do Green Beliefs Translate Into Green Travel Behavior?

In response to the threat of climate change, there is a rising tide of “green” ideas and beliefs. However, it is open to question as to whether these pro-environment attitudes actually translate into environmentally-friendly behavior. We develop a set of novel measures of community environmentalism for both the state of California and the nation as a whole based on costly behavior in both political settings and consumer markets. We use these environmentalism indicators to examine whether green beliefs are associated with green travel behavior. Previous planning research has shown that household attitudes do influence both place of residence and transport modal choice conditional on where one chooses to live. We build on this past research by documenting that environmentalist communities are generally found closer to the Central Business District, in high density communities that are physically close to rail transit stations. Using as outcome variables, household gasoline consumption and the percentage commuting by transit or non-motorized modes, we find an association between green beliefs and environmentally-friendly travel patterns. We pay careful attention to describing three different causal explanations for our findings. While the policy implications of our findings differ depending on which of the three explanations is the major causal mechanism, all three explanations share the same underlying mechanism that environmentalists seek to live a “green” lifestyle.