Testing the validity of SustainABLE-16 and SustainABLE-8 Questionnaires to assess the views of older people in Australia on environmental sustainability

• The SustainABLE-16 tool was validated for the first time in Australia. • SustainABLE-16 was found to be less suited in this context. • Shorter SustainABLE-8 proved to be a valid and suitable tool for South Australia. • Pro-environmental behaviours were found to be strongly influenced Beliefs in sustainability. • Weak correlation exists between Pro-environmental behaviour and Financial position. Older people have an important role to play in achieving environmental sustainability; however, studies to investigate their intentions and behaviours to achieve sustainability are scarce. To respond to this gap in knowledge, the SustainABLE-16 tool has been developed to measure how older people view environmental sustainability. The tool has been validated in Poland, Romania, North Macedonia and Israel. This paper presents a further validation of SustainABLE-16 in South Australia, involving 147 older people. The results show that, similar to the previous validations, when applied in South Australia the full version of SustainABLe-16 did not meet internationally-recognised fit requirements; however, the shorter version, SustainABLE-8, is shown to be a reliable and valid measure for use in this context. With SustainABLE-8, the three latent constructs – Pro-environmental behaviours, Financial position, and Beliefs – were found to have strong factors loadings, indicating that the observed variables reliably represented their respective latent constructs. The results also showed that among the respondents there was a strong association between Pro-environmental behaviours and Beliefs; however, Pro-environmental behaviours were found to have a weak correlation with Financial position. While SustainABLE-8 has been shown to be a valid tool for use in an Australian context, further Australian validations are required particularly with more diverse samples, including older people with lower socio-economic status and culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.