Is Using Public Transportation Considered As Pro-Environmental Behavior? : Maybe Yes, but There Might be Some Differences between Them.
The purpose of this paper is to see whether the factors selecting public transportation are different from those of pro-environmental behaviors.
In 2024, we conducted survey research in Japan. 1,500 people were randomly selected from across Japan. We outsourced mailing and collection of questionnaires to a reliable research institute. Response rate is 55.4 percent.
Findings are as follows: first, we found that different variables correlated with two behaviors. As for pro-environmental behaviors, the highest score of Spearman’s rho was 0.340 for “I want to do whatever I can that would be good for the environment.” Eight out of the top ten correlated variables were environmentally related. But as for using public transportation, only two out of the top ten correlated variables were environmentally related. The highest rho score was 0.259 for “Using public transportation helps to solve global warming.”
Second, we found that women were more likely to do pro-environmental behaviors. But, as for using public transportation, there was no relation with gender. In Japan, there is still a tendency for women to do housework. And we found that for overall respondents, there was a relation with housework sharing rate and pro-environmental behaviors. High-rate sharing (60-80 percent) respondents tend to do more pro-environmental behaviors than low-rate sharing (0-20 percent) respondents. But controlling by gender, we found this relation only in female respondents. And, as for using public transportation, there was no relation with housework sharing rate.
These findings suggest that public transportation is not chosen solely for environmental reasons. And we might need to consider the influence of traditional Japanese gender roles on pro-environmental behaviors.