Attitude and behaviour – a study of consumers’ explanations for the gap in between

Abstract: The purpose with this study is to explore how consumers explain the attitude-behaviour gap in the field of environmental consumerism. For this qualitative research, constructionism as an ontological approach was chosen to reach the purpose. Further, phenomenological philosophy has been the interpretative approach and in order to reach rich and nuanced empirical material focus groups were chosen as the procedure for this research. From the study it can be concluded that four themes were prominent as explanations for the attitude-behaviour gap: price, lack of information, values and beliefs and marketing communication. The first two can to some extent be overcome through marketing communication, however they all indicate that lack of motivation is an explanation for the attitude-behaviour gap.