Researchers have raised concerns regarding the applicability of original New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale proposed by Dunlap and Van Liere (1978) and validity of dimensions in the context of cultures other than US where the study was originally carried out. Thus, there is a need to test the applicability of the original NEP scale from the point of view of Indian consumers. In the light of the above, the present study attempts to refine and validate original NEP scale keeping in mind the Indian audience. With this objective, data were collected using self-administered structured questionnaire from 429 office-goers in Delhi and Mumbai. The cities were chosen because of their rank as no. 1 and 3, respectively, among the most polluted metropolitan cities of India. Test of reliability and dimensionality of the original NEP scale was carried out with the help of SPSS 18.0. The data were further subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). It was found that the original scale lacked unidimensionality. As against the three dimensions of the original NEP scale, four dimensions emerged in the case of Indian consumers. The new dimension has been duly identified and named. Due to heavy cross-loadings, three items from the original NEP scale were dropped, reducing it to be a 9-item scale. The scale developed has been named as Indian New Environmental Paradigm (I-NEP) scale or I-NEP in short. The I-NEP fared better in terms of the psychometric properties in comparison to the original NEP scale. It is expected that the proposed I-NEP scale would help in measuring the environmental attitudes of Indians in a more reliable and efficient manner, resulting in savings in terms of time and cost, too.
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