The sociological and attitudinal bases of environmentally-related beliefs and behaviour in Britain

Abstract

Whilst environmental issues are now a prominent part of the public policy agenda in Britain, less attention has been paid to the factors shaping contemporary public concern for the environment. The sources of environmentally-related beliefs and behaviours in contemporary British public opinion are assessed, using data from the British Household Panel Survey 2008-9. Exploratory data reduction analysis is undertaken on multiple indicators of environmental concern. Two multi-item scales relating to the perceived impacts of climate change and consumer behaviours are examined. Linear regression analysis shows that sociological and attitudinal factors have similar effects on beliefs and behaviour. The sociological factors showing consistent effects are gender, age, religious salience and education. Attitudinally, there are broadly consistent effects for partisanship and political engagement. The effects of other variables differ across beliefs and behaviours.

Political ideology and views about climate change in the European Union

“…Using data from the 2009 British Social Attitudes Survey, he finds that political ideology and party identification are both associated with concern about the effects of transportation on climate change; Right-wing beliefs and support for the Conservative Party are associated with lower levels of concern. In a separate study, Clements (2012b), examining data from the 2008-2009 nationally representative British Household Panel Survey, finds that Conservative Party supporters are less likely to perceive negative impacts of climate change than are Liberal Democrat supporters.…”

“…Eight of these studies, which typically focus on respondents' political party identification, analyze data from the general public of a single country: Australia (Tranter 2011(Tranter , 2013, Canada (Lachapelle et al 2012), 3 and the UK (Poortinga et al 2011, Whitmarsh 2011, Clements 2012a, 2012b, Carter and Clements 2015. The remaining three studies (Tjernström and Tietenberg 2008, Kvaløy et al 2012, Tranter and Booth 2015, which focus on respondents' leftright ideology, perform cross-national analyses on data from a wide range of countries, but are limited by their use of single-item indicators of climate change views.…”

Scepticism in a changing climate: A cross-national study

“…Clements, 2012;Franzen and Vogl, 2013;Givens and Jorgenson, 2011;Tranter, 2010) and the political bases of environmental attitudes (e.g. Dunlap et al, 2001;Nawrotzki, 2012).…”

Governance explains variation in national responses to the biodiversity crisis

“…Relationship with National Individual environmentalism (across countries) (within country) Wealth (1) Variable, generally positive GDP or rate of economic development (Gelissen 2007;Givens & Jorgenson 2011) Personal wealth relative to the national average (Gelissen 2007;Franzen & Vogl 2013), but see Dunlap and York (2008) Trust (2) Positive Governance (Harring 2013) Interpersonal trust (Meyer & Liebe 2010;Franzen & Vogl 2013) Post-materialism (3) Positive Post-materialism (Gelissen 2007) Post-materialist values (Gelissen 2007;Franzen & Vogl 2013;Gifford & Nilsson 2014), but see Davis (2000) Awareness (4) Positive Media coverage of environmental issues (Harring et al 2011); national levels of education (Ignatow 2006) Individual levels of education (Gelissen 2007;Clements 2012;Franzen & Vogl 2013;Gifford & Nilsson 2014) Autonomy/maturity (5) Positive Years since independence (Hershfield et al 2014); autonomy, self-expression (Dobewall & Strack 2014) Sense of control, age, political engagement (Gelissen 2007;Clements 2012;Gifford & Nilsson 2014) Integration (6) Positive Integration with world polity (Boli & Thomas 1997;Frank et al 2000;Givens & Jorgenson 2013); perceived country age (Hershfield et al 2014) Sense of control; responsibility (Gifford & Nilsson 2014); civic cooperation (Owen & Videras 2006) Environmental experience Positive Level of en...…”