Intergenerational attitude-behavior linkages in household energy saving: Gender inequality perspective

Households are pivotal to demand-side conservation, yet how parental gender and gender inequality shape the translation of environmental attitudes into everyday energy saving is not well understood. Using 51,110 parent-adolescent dyads from PISA 2018 across 13 countries and an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, this study examines how parents' and adolescents' attitudes relate to their own and each other's home energy-saving behaviors. Results indicate that environmental attitudes positively predict own behaviors for both generations. The country-level Gender Inequality Index significantly attenuates this attitude-behavior consistency. This dampening effect constrains both mothers and fathers. Regarding intergenerational transmission, partner effects are weak or negative. However, a significant interaction indicates that adolescent-to-parent associations appear primarily in higher-inequality contexts. These findings suggest that gender inequality is a contextual condition associated with weaker household attitude-behavior consistency. From a policy perspective, the results are consistent with the value of complementing awareness-based approaches with interventions that reduce structural barriers to household conservation.