Following through on your intentions can be difficult. We don’t always act as we intend, and these "intention behaviour gaps" occur in many areas of life – from exercise to diet and travel to medication adherence. The failure to follow through can have serious consequences for individuals, and in some cases for the planet.
In their research, Dr Kate Laffan, Dr Leonhard Lades and Professor Liam Delaney have examined the intention behaviour gaps in pro-environmental behaviours. Shedding light on the situations in which people fail to enact their good intentions can help inform strategies to encourage them to follow through, for example by highlighting external constraints that get in peoples’ way that need to be addressed for behaviour change to happen.
Increasingly, people are reporting intentions to shift their lifestyles in ways which would reduce their negative impacts on the environment. Meat consumption is one key area of consumption in which people hold such intentions.
