The Gen Z attitude-behavior gap in digital green activism

This chapter introduces the concept of attitudes from a consumer perspective and discusses the main theoretical lenses adopted in consumer research to study their role in shaping individuals’ purchasing decision processes. As a matter of fact, consumer actual behaviors often do not match with consumer attitudes, leading to the so-called attitude-behavior gap. Such phenomenon results exacerbated when considering the sustainable consumption domain, thus deserving special attention. This chapter provides an overview on the main drivers affecting this discrepancy and discusses the implications and strategies aiming at reducing such gap for markets and organizations. Furthermore, it offers a focus on the specific characteristics forming the attitude-behavior gap in sustainable consumption and argues on the determinants of such bias. In addition, the chapter offers empirical evidence on the role of young generations (e.g. Gen Z) and their online sharing behaviors in contributing to the attitude-behavior gap with electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). The results exhibit how, despite Gen Zers being often portrayed as the greenest cohort of consumers and green activists, their online sharing behavior when discussing consumer experiences seems to mismatch their attitudes, thus acting as a paradoxical generation.