What shapes the “value-action” gap? The role of time perception reconsidered

While research on determinants and consequences of environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behaviours is quite broad, limited research efforts have been spent on the investigation of the discrepancy between the two: i.e. perceiving as environmentalist while not partaking substantially to specific environmental actions. For this reason, understanding how time perception shapes the misalignments, the so called “Value-Action gap”, is the objective of the paper. We analyse both individual (related to job motivation) and social determinants (related to the imitation of pro-environmental behaviours). While the former group refers to the way time is actually perceived, by using variables depicting the way work pressure is felt, the latter group acknowledges the possibility that a social norm is embodied into people and, being imitable, it can help acting in accordance with social environmental attitudes. The empirical analysis exploits the World Bank 3rd Wave of the World Values Survey, covering the years 1995–1998 on 34 countries, and it confirms that time perception and imitation both contribute to the decrease of VAG, although to a different extent.