(from Jones and Dunlap)

Environmental attitudes - Why are these important? What do attitudes tell us? Who would benefit from knowing what the public's view of the environment is? Politicians, policymakers, telemarketers, natural resource professionals?

There's no question that the environment has, in the last 40 years, become more important to public policy debates. The timeline gives a brief example of the kinds of protections that citizens have won as a result of this process. So in the big picture, the environment has clearly become more important. Why? Part likely has to do with scientific research and the identification of some of the key environmental problems societies and communities face. Leaded gasoline, for instance, or pollution from coal-fired power generation. Nuclear power was once seen as a clean source of energy, the technological fix to dirty coal. Now we're discussing building nuclear reactors to develop hydrogen fuel cell technology.

So anyway, we have come a long way in terms of identification of problems, awareness-raising, environmental activism, and public policy. The authors want to know what causes attitudes to change. If we want to talk about a causal model, the dependent variable (DV) is environmental attitudes. The independent variable (IV) is the one that may cause a change in attitudes. As the IV changes, the DV is supposed to change in predictable ways. Some of the likely suspects for independent variables would be:

• level of formal education (for instance, as years of formal education increase, do people's attitudes become more environmental, or does the environment become more important as a policy issue?)
• age (does age affect environmental attitudes? Some in class thought that the older one gets, the more one is likely to have environment-friendly views. Others thought that it was more a generational thing. Generations are hard to measure, though, since people are being born continuously, so we often fall back on age. Others thought that younger people might be more inclined toward environmental-friendly views because of greater exposure in school curriculum. But this could vary by region as well . . . hmmmm)
• occupation (does it matter whether you're a blacksmith, WalMart greeter, neurosurgeon, teacher, scientist, farmer, or professional athlete? Are some occupations more likely than others to be populated with people who consider themselves environmentalists?)
• geographic location (some thought people in rural areas might be more environmental, some thought they might be more into natural resource extraction because of the tradition of resource extraction in rural areas)
• race, gender, social class . . . (I have seen studies that suggested the environment was a more important policy issue for women than men. Our readings suggest that environmental racism should make the environment an important issue for people of color)

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The authors presented two hypotheses: the 'broadening base' and 'economic contingency' hypotheses:

Broadening base

The assumption here is that people of upper classes would have more concern for the environment, but that as issues related to the environment gained more media attention and became more common in public policy debates, that the environmental 'base' would broaden to include people of all classes. The growth of the environmental justice movement lends some credence to this hypothesis. From this point of view, it will become harder over time to predict people's attitudes about the environment using some of the traditional variables we use, such as class, race, education, etc.

Economic contingency hypothesis

This hypothesis says that declines in concern over environment are correlated with social class and economic conditions. As economic conditions worsen, individuals from the lower class will be less likely to place a high priority on environmental issues--they've got more pressing things to worry about, to put it bluntly (although hopefully you're getting out of this course a good feel for the relationship between the economy and the environment, short-term and long-term).

Jones and Dunlap reviewed the research, but their results were fairly inconclusive:

Best predictors:

• Age is the best predictor (in what direction?) Correlations were still low, though, between .16 to .28. If you consider that 1.0 is a perfect correlation, this isn't a very strong predictor of an individual's environmental attitudes.
• Political ideology, education, and residence (at age 16--this is a sort of proxy measure for the rural-urban variable). The correlations were between .1 and .2--even lower.

Intermediate predictors:

• Current residence
• Political party affiliation
• Industrial sector (occupation)
• None of these were good predictors.

Poor predictors

• Race
• Gender
• Family income
• Occupational prestige

So what, you ask? Is it just too difficult to predict people's views on the environment? This doesn't mean it isn't important for many people, it just means that people's views can vary widely by class, race, gender, geographic location, etc. People are pesky that way.

One of the difficulties might be the whole enterprise of attitude surveys. It's one thing to say what you think on a survey. It's another to assess people's actual behaviors as a measure of their environmentalism. Do you recycle? Drive a Ford Behemoth? Produce more than 4 32 gallon cans of garbage per week? Give money to the Sierra Club? Protest against local polluters? Try to avoid steroid-fed beef? Shake your fist when you drive by the Tyson Turkey Factory? Throw your Starbucks cup out the window on the way to work (or your cigarette butts)? Use lethal pesticides on your house plants and throw the empty container in your regular garbage? Etcetera. Social scientists often talk about the difference between attitudes and values. Values tend to be less fickle, closer to the core belief systems of a culture, than attitudes. For instance, in America, we've talked about the idea of technology as progress. Americans generally believe in individualism. It's convenient for blaming the poor and justifying enforcement of private property. Attitudes may be thought of more like taste, or fashion. They may change more quickly, and may be more superficial in nature. What do we learn by assessing them? Ever take an attitude survey? Environment as an important value in terms of policy debates may have gained cache over time--I suppose one could measure the extent to which politicians in campaigns addressed environmental issues, and see how that has varied (but again, you're likely to find big differences from one region to another, among other variables).

However, to the extent that children are getting more environmental education early in school, that could prove to be an influence but we may not see the effects for some time. Those effects could also be diluted because not all schools are following the same curricula, but one could do comparative, longitudinal studies. Making conclusive statements based on statistics in the social sciences is a fickle way to make a living, because once again humans are so darn pesky and unpredictable. There are lots of well educated people who are pro-business and have little concern for the environment. There are lots of elderly people who are concerned about the environment. Making sweeping generalizations probably reduces the complexity of individuals and the sorts of influences that may sway their attitudes about the environment.

Robert Jones and Riley Dunlap. 2001. The social bases of environmental concern: Have they changed over time? Pp 164-79 in (R. Scott Frey, editor) The Environment and Society Reader. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. On electronic reserve