Environmental Health Sciences, Religion, and Spirituality

Sustainable Behavior among Spanish University Students in Terms of Dimensions of Religion and Spirituality

“…Higher levels of atheism was associated with greater altruistic sustainable behavior, greater responsible consumption and greater austerity or frugality. While the first two relationships are consistent with previous studies in which this greater pro-sustainability was observed (e.g., [20,41,76]) in non-religious people, the correlations observed between frugality and atheism (positive) and frugality and non-belief (negative) may seem contradictory. Austerity refers to limited consumption and waste of resources [5,77]; namely, a non-luxurious lifestyle that seeks to avoid unnecessary expenses.…”

“…This relevance of the religious beliefs dimension is also observed in the area of non-religiousness. As in Oman and Morello-Rosch [20], in our study it was observed that disagreement with common religious beliefs was associated with a less altruistic and frugal sustainability, less responsible consumption and an overall measure of sustainable behavior. Environmentally-friendly sustainable behavior was, however, the exception to this trend, which is not related to studies that attribute environmental concern of contemporary forms of religiousness to the influence of Eastern religions-particularly Buddhism and Hinduism-on new religious movements that treat nature as sacred [74] and to ecological-cultural models [75].…”

“…Traditional religiousness and spirituality exercise a notable influence over the sustainable attitudes and behaviors of institutions [19] and societies [20]. They also affect individual behavior, in particular that of consumers [21][22][23][24].…”

“…In Buddhism, for example, it has been associated with corporate environmental responsibility [25] and sustainability [26], both in socio-institutional contexts. On an individual level, religion and spirituality facilitate sustainable behavior through their influence on personal values [27], motivations and goals [20], lifestyles [28], ethics [29,30] and moral identity [31]. Empirically, previous studies have also linked Christian and Buddhist religiousness to greater sustainable consumption [32], intrinsic religious orientation with green product purchases [33] and religiousness/spirituality with sustainable behavior and attitudes (cited in [20]).…”

“…Non-religiousness has also been shown to be empirically related to sustainability, although in contrasting manners between different studies, with both positive relationships (e.g., greater sustainability in people who self-identify as non-religious, or as a function of the image of God; see [20] and [41], respectively) and negative relationships (e.g., between religiousness/spirituality and sustainable consumption [42]; or between responsible consumption and the image of God [41]. Lee, Bahl, Balck, Duber-Smith and Vowles [43] also highlighted how high levels of religiousness did not affect unsustainable consumption, although spirituality did affect both sustainable and unsustainable consumption.…”