Assessing people's general ecological behavior: a cross-cultural measure

The present study aims to further develop the General Ecological Behavior (GEB) scale in order to apply it cross-culturally. The scale is proposed to be relatively open, neither bound to a particular set of ecological behaviors nor to a particular questionnaire response format. Questionnaire data from 686 California students were compared with the original Swiss calibration data. Reliability, internal consistency, and discriminant validity revcal that the GEB could be applied to the California students as well as to the Swiss sample, which consisted of older adults. Because the GEB measure makes use of behavior difficulties–caused by situational influences-the proposed approach also guides the search for political actions that could promote changes in more ecologically behaving societies.