Surveying Ethical and Environmental Attitudes

Although the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change continues to grow, public discourse still reflects a high level of scepticism and political polarisation towards anthropogenic climate change. In this study (N = 499) we attempted to replicate and expand upon an earlier finding that environmental terminology (“climate change” versus “global warming”) could partly explain political polarisation in environmental scepticism (Schuldt, Konrath, & Schwarz, 2011). Participants completed a series of online questionnaires assessing personality traits, political preferences, belief in environmental phenomenon, and various pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. Those with a Conservative political orientation and/or party voting believed less in both climate change and global warming compared to those with a Liberal orientation and/or party voting. Furthermore, there was an interaction between continuously measured political orientation, but not party voting, and question wording on beliefs in environmental phenomena. Personality traits did not confound these effects. Furthermore, continuously measured political orientation was associated with pro-environmental attitudes, after controlling for personality traits, age, gender, area lived in, income, and education. The personality domains of Openness, and Conscientiousness, were consistently associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, whereas Agreeableness was associated with pro-environmental attitudes but not with behaviours. This study highlights the importance of examining personality traits and political preferences together and suggests ways in which policy interventions can best be optimised to account for these individual differences.

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Who Speaks for Nature?

10.1093/oso/9780190908959.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Todd A. Eisenstadt ◽

Karleen Jones West

Keyword(s):

Ethnic Groups ◽

Environmental Degradation ◽

Oil Spills ◽

Environmental Attitudes ◽

Nationwide Survey ◽

Well Being ◽

Early Theory ◽

Oil Drilling ◽

Indigenous Worldviews ◽

Individual Vulnerability

Parting from conventional social science arguments that people speak for the ethnic groups they represent or for social or class-based groups, this study argues that attitudes of Ecuador’s Amazon citizens are shaped by environmental vulnerability, and specifically exposure to environmental degradation. Using results of a nationwide survey to demonstrate that vulnerability matters in determining environmental attitudes of respondents, the authors argue that groups might have more success mobilizing on behalf of the environment through geographically based “polycentric rights,” rather than through more traditional and ethnically bound multicultural rights. This book offers among the first methodological bridges between scholarship considering social movements, and predominantly ethnic groups, as primary agents of environmental change in Latin America and those emphasizing the agency of individuals. The authors conduct a nationwide survey to glean respondent positions on a range of environmental issues, then contextualize these findings through scores of in-depth interviews with indigenous, environmental, government, academic, and civil society leaders throughout Ecuador between 2014 and 2017. They find that some abstract issues—like indigenous worldviews—affect peoples’ attitudes, but that concrete experiences—such as that of living in areas of environmental degradation due to oil drilling—is a more important conditioner of environmental attitudes. The authors qualify post-materialism, an early theory of environmentalism, which argues that material well-being makes citizens more protective of the environment. The book concludes that post-materialism must be tempered by individual vulnerability, and that group activism is more successful where people have not yet been adversely impacted by environmental degradation such as oil spills and forest destruction.

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Environmental attitudes and behaviour of birdwatchers: a missing link

Tourism Recreation Research ◽

10.1080/02508281.2021.1920755 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-20

Author(s):

Pedro Pintassilgo ◽

Patrícia Pinto ◽

Andreia Costa ◽

António Matias ◽

M. Helena Guimarães

Keyword(s):

Environmental Attitudes ◽

Missing Link

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Multidimensional Model of Environmental Attitudes: Evidence Supporting an Abbreviated Measure in Spanish

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph18094438 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (9) ◽

pp. 4438

Author(s):

Elena Andrade ◽

Gloria Seoane ◽

Luis Velay ◽

Jose-Manuel Sabucedo

Keyword(s):

Political Ideology ◽

Online Teaching ◽

Environmental Attitudes ◽

Environmental Movement ◽

Measurement Model ◽

Validity Evidence ◽

Teaching Platform ◽

First Order ◽

Economic Liberalism ◽

Growth Economic

We conducted three independent studies to support the Spanish version of the Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI). The first study consisted of translating and pre-testing on a sample of 125 college students. The second consisted of testing the EAI on a sample of 225 university students in several undergraduate courses. Student data were collected using two different methods, through an online teaching platform and in the classroom. The findings were symmetrical in terms of precision and dimensionality. The third study completed the aforementioned ones testing the items on a representative sample from the general population in Spain. The participants were 630 citizens from 17 regions and responded to the EAI using an online platform. The results of the factor analysis led us to propose a measurement model, with 18 items and six first-order factors: environmental movement activism, conservation motivated by anthropocentric concern, confidence in science and technology, personal conservation behaviour, human dominance over nature, and support for population growth policies. External validity evidence was assessed by the correlation with the following variables: neuroticism, ecological behaviour, limits to economic growth, economic liberalism, sustainability, altruism, and social desirability. These estimations stayed away from demographic and personal aspects such as age, sex, political ideology, and region.

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Environmental Attitudes and Willingness to Purchase Online—Classification Approach

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13158592 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (15) ◽

pp. 8592

Author(s):

Marcin Gąsior

Keyword(s):

Information Search ◽

Environmental Attitudes ◽

Low Cost ◽

Ease Of Use ◽

Internet Users ◽

Research Procedure ◽

Willingness To Purchase ◽

Willingness To Use ◽

Competitive Pricing ◽

Self Reporting Questionnaire

During the last several years, a tremendous increase in the popularity of online shopping has been observed. There are several possible reasons behind it, some of them, like competitive pricing, convenience or low cost of information search, considered to be extrinsic, others—like ease of use of this channel, pleasure related to it or willingness to reduce social interactions—intrinsic. The purpose of this research is to evaluate another factor, i.e., consumers’ environmental attitudes, in the perspective of their possible relation with the perception and willingness to use online and conventional shopping channels. In order to achieve this, a self-reporting questionnaire was developed and the data from a representative sample of 1000 Polish Internet users was gathered. The research procedure included cluster analysis, whose objective was to identify groups of customers with similar composition of environmental attitudes and next, a set of Kruskal–Wallis tests, aimed at identifying differences in opinions on channels between these clusters. The research proved that large groups of consumers with consistent sets of environmental attitudes exist and the scope of differences between such clusters is not reduced to a unidimensional, “positive–negative” continuum. Furthermore, there are significant differences between clusters in the declared willingness to use online and conventional shopping channels—groups more environmentally-oriented are more willing to purchase online and trust online shops, although they neither perceive conventional retail in a more negative way nor directly prefer online over conventional channels. The nature of such a phenomenon is open to explanation and interpretation, nevertheless, the research proves that environmental attitudes should be included in future models of consumers’ channel choice.

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