Abstract
This study examined the relationships between a general measure of environmental attitude (NEP), general environmental knowledge (GEK), and general ecological behavior (GEB) in two university student samples, one from Argentina (N Arg = 85, M age = 24.1, 59 % female) and one from Germany (N Ger = 98, M age = 22.5, 51 % female). Whereas Argentinean and German students did not differ in ecological worldview, Germans displayed more environmental knowledge (d= 1.40) and reported more ecological behavior (d= .87). Two separately conducted hierarchical regression analyses for each sample revealed that after controlling for age and gender, ecological worldview explained about the same amount of variance in both countries (5 % in Germany vs. 6 % in Argentina). Environmental knowledge on the other hand explained an additional 24 % of variance in ecological behavior in the German sample only and accounted for no additional variance in the argentine sample. These differences are discussed in terms of situational restrictions that are thought to be stronger in Argentina and thus suppress the influence of environmental knowledge on ecological behavior.