Measuring cultural values and beliefs about environment to identify their role in climate change responses

Cultural theory elucidates conflicting opinions driving the climate change debate. Patterns of shared values and beliefs are described as cultural biases. These partial perspectives about society and environment legitimize four ways of life worldviews. This research tests whether cultural biases about the environment have the same structure as those about society to clarify their role in climate change responses. Study 1 details psychometric measures developed through an online survey of Australians (n=290). Study 2 replicates the measures (n=5081), and assesses their predictive validity in relation to climate change beliefs and carbon-relevant behaviors. Two negatively correlated dimensions were identified that differ from the grid-group framework and four myths-of-nature described in the theory. Individualistic and fatalistic perspectives frame the environment as ‘elastic’ to justify damaging behaviours. Hierarchical and egalitarian perspectives frame the environment as ‘ductile’ to justify collective action to conserve the environment. Arguments regarding social prescriptions constraining behavior (grid) are collapsed into arguments regarding the role of the collective (group). Notions of human agency and environmental resilience justify different behaviors. These measures demonstrate inverse direct relationships with carbonrelevant behaviors, climate change beliefs, and environmental concern. Implications for cultural theory, and ways that measurement shapes understanding of these concepts, are discussed.