Environmental Attitudes as Predictors of Policy Support across Three Countries

Stephen Kellert’s typology of attitudes and Dunlap and Van Liere’s New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale represent two different approaches to environmental attitudes. Both approaches were used to predict policy support for environmental protection among college students in Trinidad, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. Results showed country and gender differences in the strength of environmental attitudes. Trinidadians showed the strongest proenvironmental attitudes on the NEP, and both Trinidadians and Dominicans showed stronger proenvironmental attitudes than Americans as indicated by both the NEP and the moralistic/aesthetic items derived from Kellert’s typology. The different attitude measures were differentially predictive of policy support in the three countries. Overall, the best predictors of support for environmentally protective policies were the NEP and Kellert’s Utilitarian factor. These results support the notion that 709 AUTHORS’ NOTE: This research was supported in part by a summer research fellowship to the first author from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The authors appreciate the assistance and feedback from the Psychology of Environmental Issues lab group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The authors are also grateful to Howard Nelson for helping construct the Kellert items, to Thomas Heberlein for advice, and special thanks go to the participating universities and individuals who helped with the development of the survey in Trinidad and in the Dominican Republic. ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 34 No. 6, November 2002 709-739 DOI: 10.1177/001391602237243 © 2002 Sage Publications combining the Kellert approach with Dunlap and Van Liere’s NEP does increase the predictability of environmental policy support. While environmental concerns in the United States are an integral part of many social, economic, and political aspects of American life, we know little about how people in other countries and cultures view the environment. Moreover, we know little about what leads people to be concerned about environmental issues. Few systematic studies on environmental attitudes and beliefs across cultures or countries have been done (Bechtel, Verdugo, & Pinheiro, 1999; Schultz & Zelezny, 1999). The purpose of this article is to expand the extent of environmental attitude research in different countries while searching for significant predictors of policy support. Support for environmental policies is important because without public support it is difficult for any government to institute new policies to protect the environment. This study examines the extent to which general environmental attitudes and more specific environmental concerns predict policy support in three different countries: Trinidad, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. In the United States, Dunlap and Van Liere’s (1978) New Environmental Paradigm Scale (NEP) is a very widely used environmental attitude measure. According to Dunlap and Van Liere, ideas such as “limits to growth” and the importance of preserving the “balance of nature” represented a challenge to previously held beliefs that the physical environment could support unlimited growth. The orthodox view of the human-nature relationship is one in which there is a belief in economic growth, material abundance, and humans as above and exempt from the rest of nature. Coined the “dominant social paradigm” (DSP) by Pirages and Erhlich (1974), these views represented society’s antienvironmental thrust. Dunlap and Van Liere argued that with the upsurge of environmental awareness in the 1970s, a new set of ideas was challenging the DSP. They set out to measure this developing set of ideas and coined the phrase “new environmental paradigm” (or NEP) to describe this worldview. According to Inglehart (1990), the shift toward environmentalism in America was linked to a postmaterialist shift in cultural values; in other words, industrial development and a high standard of living were believed to be a prerequisite for the existence of positive environmental attitudes. Thus, it was presumed that high levels of environmental concern existed only among people in developed countries. The reasoning behind this presumption was based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory; developing countries could not afford the luxury of environmental concern because they struggled with more basic needs and concerns. 710 ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR / November 2002