Attitude and Intention towards Degrowth: Scale Development and Validation

This paper aims to review the construct and measurement of attitude and intention towards degrowth. Degrowth is a useful addition to the vocabulary of social and environmental sciences that has been emerging in the academy in the last few years. This study assumes degrowth concept as “an equitable downscaling of production and consumption the increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long term” (Schneider; Kallis; Martínez-Alier, 2010) This research develops and validates an attitude-intention-oriented degrowth scale within the following components: ecological sustainability, meaning of life and wellbeing, anti-utilitarianism, justice and democracy. The item generation for the scale relies on both activist-led and theoretical notions of degrowth. As an exploratory research, we interviewed some activist and academic specialists, asking them to describe, in an open-ended format, the attitudes and behaviors of “degrowth lifestyle” in general. Frequently mentioned attitude descriptions supported by theory were converted into items, such as the promotion of small scale and participatory alternatives: cycling, reuse, vegetarianism, co-housing, solidarity economy, domestic work; alternative money systems, agroecological and food systems, climate justice, meaningful employment, as well as transport and alternative energy systems (Demaria et al., 2013). We use a Likert scale format for all items. We selected the sample of consumers through social media. We implemented initial data collection efforts to generate items and filter them using tests of reliability and validity in order to eliminate redundant, ambiguous and other faulting items. We performed exploratory factor analysis and reliability assessment tests on data from the first survey, and a confirmatory factor analysis in the final scale, containing items that behave consistently across the samples and possess adequate reliability. The potential value of the scale we propose is the possibility of giving support to some of fundamental statements which are firmly accepted within the degrowth community but are still far from being accepted by academia and society as a whole. Martínez-Alier et al. (2010) argue that there is room for new work on the profile of a society with much less material consumption, especially in countries where industrialization continues to trail strong paths. We must understand under what circumstances policies that focus on degrowth can provide more awareness about the environment and behavioral changing than other approaches. We expect that this research can enable researchers to use the scale to better understand the attitude and intention of consumers, being able to relate the scale with behavior scales and other measurements in order to reach this new profile of consumers that has been formed and the new values and attitudes that guide their lifestyle. From business perspective, given the imminent possibility of changing behaviors towards a simpler and more frugal standards of living, companies that are aware of these changes will be able to move ahead and guarantee their share of market, establishing themselves as pioneers in providing products and services that such consumers will be willing to acquire.