The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of implicit (automatic) attitudes to explain the weak attitude-behavior relationships often found in consumer behavior research. One research domain that has revealed low attitude-behavior consistencies is environmentally friendly consumer behavior. In order to better understand this discrepancy, we measured not only explicit but also implicit attitudes toward green consumer behavior by means of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Explicit measures revealed positive attitudes, while the IAT showed more positive attitudes toward the ecological than toward the traditional product (Exp.1) or no differences in these attitudes (Exp.2 and 3). When existing products were involved, implicit attitudes related to behavioral intention, even where the explicit attitude measure did not.
