Wealth, Post-materialism and Consumers' Pro-environmental Intentions: A Multilevel Analysis across 25 Nations

Abstract

This research aims to test Inglehart's thesis regarding the relationship between post‐materialist values, wealth of nations and environmental intentions as measured by willingness to sacrifice to protect the environment. Due to the hierarchical nature of the data, the study uses multilevel and Bayesian multilevel modeling to cross‐culturally test Inglehart's thesis. The results from 25 nations contradict Inglehart's thesis, which claims that environmental intentions are post‐material values—a set of attitudes that develop among wealthy people once the more basic needs have been achieved. The general pattern of the results shows that willingness to sacrifice to protect the environment is a global phenomenon and not unique to the wealthy nations. The findings of this paper highlight the importance of simultaneously assessing individual‐level and contextual‐level variables in determining environmental intentions across nations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Grassroots engagement with transition to sustainability: diversity and modes of participation in the international permaculture movement

“…In the R environment, the most mature and flexible function for fitting multivariate MLMs is MCMCglmm, which is Bayesian in approach (Hadfield 2010). Bayesian MLMs have been used effectively in cross-national studies of attitudes toward, though not engagement with, environmentalism (Nawrotzki 2012, Mostafa 2013. The Bayesian approach is also theoretically suitable.…”

Justifying environmentally significant behavior choices: An American-Hungarian cross-cultural comparison

“…This fact may be relevant because affluence may have an impact on environmental attitudes and their consequences; however, results on affluence are inconclusive. Many studies have argued a relation between higher levels of environmental concern and more affluent economies (Diekmann & Franzen, 1999;Franzen, 2003;Franzen & Meyer, 2010;Gelissen, 2007;Inglehart, 1990;1995;Oreg & Katz-Gerro, 2006), while others have questioned this relationship (Dunlap, Gallup, & Gallup, 1993;Dunlap & York, 2008;Fairbrother, 2012;Givens & Jorgenson, 2011;Mostafa, 2011). We share the view that affluence does have an impact on environmentalism not only by influencing value priorities, but by offering higher freedom in choice for behavioral alternatives on both the pro-environmental and on the environmentally harmful side (see, e.g., Vlek & Steg, 2007).…”

Current and Future Friends of the Earth: Assessing Cross-National Theories of Environmental Attitudes

“…Thus, it is thought that generations socialized in material affluence tend to lift their sights to appreciate and preserve the environment even when there are real costs to doing so. Because postmaterialism relies on gradual opinion change resulting from different socialization contexts the thesis differs from the simpler affluence hypothesis, which posits that environmentalism is a 'normal' good directly (and positively) related to income [18,19].…”

“…Environmentalism is peripheral to this, with even the twelve-item index of postmaterialism including only one question on the environment [26] (p. 938). Second, comparative studies have focused disproportionately on developed nations [16,18,[35][36][37][38]. Some research has used the International Social Survey Programme [19,39], but even the latest ISSP data (from the year 2000) extends to only 26 countries, most of which are Western.…”