Why do we procrastinate green consumption?

Among the few studies focused on the dilemma between environmental attitudes and behaviour, different reasons have been proposed for ethical consumer intention-behaviour gap: the lack of necessary motivation, opportunities from change and ability to change, the awareness variation between types of behaviour, the conflicting preferences between environmental and other product characteristics, and finally, the time lag between personal values and behavioural changes (Alwitt & Pitts, 1996; Bech-Larsen, 1996; Moisander, 2007; Thøgersen, 2004; Thøgersen & Ölander, 2003; Uusitalo, 1990). In particular, focusing on time, it seems that consumers tend to postpone the adoption of environmental behaviours. This may be because they feel duties to their community and environment but also feel duties to themselves and their families (Gebauer, Riketta, Broemer, & Maio. 2008, McDonald & Aalborg 2009), and some of these duties may conflict (Connolly & Prothero, 2008, Macnaghten, 2003; Prothero, Dobscha, Freund, Kilbourne, Luchs, Ozanne, & Thøgersen 2011). Therefore, in many cases people could perceive as preferable an action required in the long term instead of in the short term as they would then have the time to solve, or reduce, the perceived conflict. Indeed this maybe what happens in the case of green consumption. Based on these considerations, in this study we will investigate the effect of the individual time horizon orientation- the time a consumer believes will elapse before he/she can experience the outcomes caused by his/her eventual choice (Wright & Weitz, 1977) - on the green counsumer behaviour.