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Understanding Environmental Policy Preferences: New Evidence from Brazil
... Assumingly, the relation between environmental attitude and education level should be positive (Van Liere and Dunlap 1980;Gelissen 2007). However, there are inconsistencies, since according to Aklin et al. (2013), people with university degree are not necessarily more pro-environmental than the ones who have just finished high school. Aklin et al. (2013) have found that individuals with higher level of education in Brazil are more interested in the environment, although it is not yet clear whether such interest only reflects on better environmental attitude. ...
... However, there are inconsistencies, since according to Aklin et al. (2013), people with university degree are not necessarily more pro-environmental than the ones who have just finished high school. Aklin et al. (2013) have found that individuals with higher level of education in Brazil are more interested in the environment, although it is not yet clear whether such interest only reflects on better environmental attitude. Franzen and Vogl (2013) indicated that the inclusion of topics related to dangers and threats to the environment in school curricula increases people's knowledge about, and concern with, environmental causes. ...
... However, Dunlap and York (2008) pointed out that poor people living in developing countries have greater proenvironmental attitude than the rich ones, besides being willing to make economic sacrifices for environmental causes. According to Aklin et al. (2013), the association between increased income and environmental awareness among Brazilians may have positive, although not significant, correlation. Diekmann and Franzen (1999) indicated positive correlation between per capita income and environmental preferences. ...
The human pressure on nature makes it imperative understanding how environmental issues can influence the world view of society. The aim of the current article is to measure the environmental attitude of the urban population living in the Macapá City, Amapá state, Brazilian Amazon region and to check whether this attitude is influenced by sociodemographic variables. We collected 387 full interviews conducted with individuals. In order to do so, we used the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) tool composed of 15 items distributed in five facets. Results showed positive correlations between the NEP scale and variables “education level” and “annual income,” as well as negative correlation between such scale and variable “age.” Urban childhood place recorded higher pro-ecological attitude rate than the rural one. All facets, except for limits, recorded moderate-to-high scores, thus indicating that the population has positive pro-environmental attitude profile, although it did not show much concern about the increased human population on Earth.
... Because the content of political party electoral platforms is presumed to be strongly driven by citizen demand, the contextual features that stimulate citizen concern for the environment are also potential drivers of the importance that environment-related issues have in party manifestos. From this perspective, a number of contributions that study the determinants of citizen attitudes towards the environment offer interesting considerations (Torgler and Garcías-Valiñas, 2007 ;Aklin et al., 2013 ;Ercolano et al., 2014). ...
... P j β k X ikt contains the classical controls included in studies on the role of electoral rules on fiscal policies (Rodrik, 1998 ;Tabellini, 1999, 2004). A few studies consider public spending towards environment, that why I mainly relate to the determinants disused by Potrafke (2011), Aklin et al. (2013), and Garmann (2014). Socio-economic variables included are the log of the GDP per capita, the trade openness as percentage of GDP, as well as the share of people under 15 years and the share of people between 15 and 64. ...
... Population age The higher the share of theHowell and Laska (1992) ;Carlsson and POPULATION aging population, the lower the Johansson-Stenman (2000) ; Torgler and importance given to environmentalGarcia-Valinas (2007) ;Aklin et al. (2013) concern should be in political party manifestos.PopulationPopulation density is assumed to Johansson-Stenman (2000) ; Torgler and density drive citizen environmental con-Garcia-Valinas (2007) ;Aklin et al. (2013) cerns and the demand for environmental improvments and therefore should drive party reliance on environmentalism in electoral platforms. al., 2013). ...
In the 70s, European countries have started seeing a significant politicization of environmental issues. This trend was expressed by political parties through a platform of environmental public policies during political campaigns, as well as the setting of environmental budgets by the presidents during their terms of office. By means of five essays falling into the scope of the Public Choice School of Thought, this thesis aims at determining whether politicians’ behavior have been motivated by self-interest or rather by global well-being satisfaction.The first chapter examines how environmental issues have integrated the spectrum of French political parties of all ideologies whereas the second chapter analyses the determinants of an environmental offer and this within the European political parties since 1970. Chapter 3 and 4 focus on environmental public spending done dy European countries since 1995, and analyze the application of the environmental political pledges and the impact of the electoral rules inplace on environmental public spending at both, the central budget scale and the total budget scale of states. Chapter 5 compares political entrepreneurship to associative entrepreneurship and market entrepreneurship to determine the most efficient way of solving environmental issues.
... While the effect of specialization in services on the environmental behavior of households does not have a clear pattern. Aklin et al. (2013) carry out a similar research in Brazil and finds partially different results, where he finds that human capital has a significant effect on the practices of the households in that country. The implications of public policy derived from this research are that the government should improve environmental education in educational establishments and increase campaigns that promote environmental care. ...
... This author finds that the type of education that society receives is the most predominant to explain participation in environmental activities. Aklin et al. (2013) show that education has a beneficial effect on friendly preferences with the environment, as long as people have completed secondary education. These authors also point out that in some studies; income has a linear effect on environmental preferences. ...
... In general, these results suggest that the effect of human capital in achieving a better environmental performance is consistent for the four types of environmental practices analyzed. This result is consistent with the result obtained by Aklin et al. (2013), where it indicates that the education of the people has a positive effect on environmental preferences beneficial to the environment. Likewise, Meyer (2015) determined that a level of education up to high school could be decisive for people to have a more conscientious attitude towards environmental deterioration and therefore behave in a more appropriate way with the environment. ...
An important part of the environmental contamination comes from the daily practices of the households, which has been partially ignored in the recent empirical literature. The objective of this research is to examine the green returns of labor income and human capital in a developing country, Ecuador. We use data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (NISC) during 2010–2016 and panel data econometrics techniques. Our results show that labor income and human capital plays a relevant role in the environmental behavior of households in this country: both variables have a positive effect on the friendly environmental behavior of households. In addition, we found that the cantons specialized in manufacturing have a poor environmental performance, while the cantons specializing in services do not have a clear pattern. We also don't find significant differences in the environmental behavior associated with the composition of the ethnic groups of each canton. Finally, natural geographic regions generate differences in the environmental behavior of households. One possible implication derived from this research is that those responsible for environmental policy can mitigate pollution by promoting educational programs with environmental content and encouraging improvements in the behavior of households using tax mechanisms.
... Existing studies have investigated various influencing factors on farmers' awareness of green production, including individual characteristics such as age, education level and risk attitude (Aklin et al. 2013;Rahman 2003;Damalas 2021), household endowments such as family income, total planting area and access to related production information (Aklin et al. 2013;Jin, Bluemling, and Mol 2015;Khan, Mahmood, and Damalas 2015;Pan and Zhang 2018;Lu et al. 2020;Xue et al. 2021), and external environmental factors such as different types of government support and incentives (e.g. diffusion and subsidies) (Yu et al. 2019;Zhang et al. 2020). ...
... Existing studies have investigated various influencing factors on farmers' awareness of green production, including individual characteristics such as age, education level and risk attitude (Aklin et al. 2013;Rahman 2003;Damalas 2021), household endowments such as family income, total planting area and access to related production information (Aklin et al. 2013;Jin, Bluemling, and Mol 2015;Khan, Mahmood, and Damalas 2015;Pan and Zhang 2018;Lu et al. 2020;Xue et al. 2021), and external environmental factors such as different types of government support and incentives (e.g. diffusion and subsidies) (Yu et al. 2019;Zhang et al. 2020). ...
Based on data for 812 Chinese farmers and a conditional mixed process (CMP) approach, this paper investigates the impact of farmers’ e-commerce participation on their awareness of green production. Main results include: (1) e-commerce participation increases farmers’ overall awareness of green production by 0.771 (i.e. 0.88 standard deviations); meanwhile such impact is more evident for old-generation, low-income and small-scale farmers; (2) risk awareness is most affected among three sub-dimensions; (3) three influencing channels are confirmed, which are improving information acquisition, strengthening connections with the food market, and alleviating information asymmetry. This paper concludes that e-commerce can play a significant role in promoting the green transition of farmers and agricultural production. As for implications, policymakers need to further promote e-commerce in agriculture while building a more solid food system, including green food certification and a full chain traceability system. However, farmers’ heterogeneities should be considered when any intervention is proposed.
... There is little evidence that income shapes the environmental preferences of Brazilian respondents. In particular, Aklin et al. (2013), using a wide sample on the Brazilian population, find non-linear income effects on (general) environmental preferences. Interestingly, while our results specifically focus on ES provided by agricultural systems, they are in keeping with the cited study where it is found that those with income higher than 10 minimum wages (between 2 and 5 minimum wages) are less (more) proenvironmental. ...
... Interestingly, while our results specifically focus on ES provided by agricultural systems, they are in keeping with the cited study where it is found that those with income higher than 10 minimum wages (between 2 and 5 minimum wages) are less (more) proenvironmental. As for Aklin et al. (2013), we interpret this result as indicating that Brazilian high-income people usually have less trust in public institutions with regards to the implementation of environmental policies. In any case, the fact that the effect found here is significant at a 10 % level recommends cautiousness and calls for further research on this issue. ...
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The Brazilian agricultural commodities market and the agribusiness sector are facing an increasing international demand for improved environmental standards, such as those regarding climate change and biodiversity loss. Although there are many studies on the structural determinants of sustainable agriculture related to the production systems, markets, and governance, there is a paucity of studies focusing on the valuation of ecosystem services (ES) provided by agricultural landscapes for which no market exists. In this context, the present paper provides estimates of the value of ES related to changes in land use and management in intensive agricultural landscapes in Brazil, using a discrete choice experiment. The results show a significant demand for changes in land use and management to deliver improved ES provision, with marginal willingness to pay (WTP) estimates falling within the R$104-541 interval (€18-93) per household and year. According to WTP, ES are ordered as follows: improved biodiversity, soil conservation, carbon storage, and aesthetics. Preference heterogeneity points to novel effects worth of closer look in future research. The results provide evidence of social support for a change to a more sustainable agricultural production model.
... Although research on public opinion and climate agreements has increased significantly in recent years (e.g., Aklin et al. 2013;Bechtel and Scheve 2013;Bechtel et al. 2019;Mildenberger and Tingley 2019), elite preferences are not well documented in the literature. This is a significant omission considering that recent work has stressed the impact of elite coalitions in areas such as global finance and international banking regulation (e.g, Chalmers 2017; Pagliari and Young 2014). ...
... First, we add experimental evidence to studies on institutional design. Our results confirm previous research that stresses the importance of institutional features on support for climate change policies (Aklin et al. 2013;Bechtel and Scheve 2013;Bechtel et al. 2019). We show that institutional support varies markedly according to elite type and country of origin, and that this heterogeneity has an important impact on collective choice and preference aggregation. ...
Which institutional features do Latin American elites favor for local climate change policies? Climate change mitigation requires active local-level implementation, but it remains unclear which institutional arrangements maximize support for environmental rules. In this paper, we run a conjoint experiment with elite members of 10 Latin American countries and ask respondents to evaluate institutional designs drawn from a pool of 5,500 possible local climate governance arrangements. We find that Latin American elites prefer international organizations to formulate climate policies, support imposing increasing fines on violators, and favor renewing agreements every 5 years. We also find that elites support both international institutions and local courts to mediate conflicts, but they distrust non-governmental organizations and reject informal norms as a means of conflict resolution. Our results identify possible challenges in crafting local climate mitigation policies and offer new insights about how to integrate local and international levels in environmental agreements.
... From the above, it is getting clear that energy sources play a pivotal role in environmental policies, and following certain authors, such as Aklin et al. (2013) or Bernauer and Koubi (2009), who defend that public opinion may be a powerful determinant of environmental policies in a developed country would be substantially interesting to explore the relationship between certain public sector variables and the energy sector, from an environmental point of view. As Blühdorn and Welsh (2007) argue, we are in a new era and eco-politics needs a new environmental sociology. ...
... Apart from energy sources, a different strand of research has incorporated many factors in sustainable growth, such as innovations, population, financial variables, and trade (Anderson and Mizak 2006;Begum et al. 2015;Komal and Abbas 2015;Nasreen and Anwar 2014;Sohag et al. 2015;Wang et al. 2016aWang et al. , 2016b; nevertheless, there are also other relevant factors that could also impact the environmental enhancement. As we have already mentioned in the "Introduction" section, public opinion may be a powerful determinant of environmental policies in a developed country (Aklin et al. 2013;Bernauer and Koubi 2009). Furthermore, Salahodjaev (2016) emphasizes globalization, democracy, and the institutional environment as potential drivers of environmental sustainability. ...
Environmental policies are a significant cornerstone of a developed economy, but the question that arises is whether such policies lead to a sustainable growth path. It is clear that the energy sector plays a pivotal role in environmental policies, and although the current literature has focused on examining the link between energy consumption and economic growth through an abundance of studies, it does not explicitly consider the role of institutional or governance quality variables in the process. Both globalization and democracy are important drivers of sustainability, while environmentalism is essential for the objective of gaining a “better world.” Governance quality is expected to be the key, not only for economic purposes but also for the efficiency of environmental policies. To that end, the analysis in this paper explores the link between governance quality and energy efficiency for the EU-28 countries, spanning the period 1995 to 2014. The findings document that there is a nexus between energy efficiency and income they move together: the most efficient countries are in the group with higher GDP per capita. Furthermore, the results show that governance quality is an important driver of energy efficiency and, hence, of environmental policies.
... In addition, engagement with parties, both internal and external, is also vital to create more awareness and environmental citizenship (Stefanovic, 2008;de Carvalho Maffia et al., 2011). Researchers have argued that policies, such as vision, implementation of environmental management system and Green University ambitions are all done in the attempt to create more environmental sustainability awareness (Gao et al., 2006;Sammalisto and Brorson, 2008;Jinliang et al., 2010;Barata et al., 2011;Aklin et al., 2013;Jabbour et al., 2013;. To have effective awareness, sustainability audits and evaluation involving measurement, assessment and reporting are critical (Baboulet and Lenzen, 2010;Sulaiman and Abdul Rahman, 2013). ...
... First, is that the knowledge about the environmental sustainability issue is created through the education system and that this is vital if the university is serious in implementing green initiatives (Bergea et al., 2006;Chuanhui and Hanwei, 2011;Taleghani et al., 2011;Abdul Aziz et al., 2012;Alwi et al., 2012;Basri et al., 2012;Sidiropoulos, 2014;Vicente-Molina et al., 2013). Education in this regard includes the revision/inclusion of the syllabus and curriculum to feature environmental sustainability elements and the development of teaching and learning materials (Aklin et al., 2013). Some universities are already integrating green elements into their architecture, computer science and IS and engineering curriculum (Abdul Aziz et al., 2012;Xiong et al., 2013). ...
Purpose
The explosion of social media use such as Facebook among higher education students is deemed to have great potential in widely disseminating environmental sustainability awareness. The paper aims to capture, summarise, synthesise and comment on the role of social media to garner interest of students and staff on environmental sustainability issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Systematic literature review technique is adopted, and three selected online databases were searched for relevant papers for review. Specific data were extracted from each paper, and the discussion section was based on the developed research questions.
Findings
Higher education needs to fully leverage the ubiquity of social media to extend how environmental sustainability is viewed by the students and staff. Sustainability practices conducted at the university level such as recycling, reduction of electricity and water consumptions and paper reduction in classroom and used to engage students on environmental matters. For staff, social media can be leveraged as to convey the university policy and assist in their quest to become full-fledged green universities.
Research limitations/implications
Some of the limitations of this research include the lack of keyword search using synonyms or related terms equivalent to the term “awareness”, lack of forward and backward searches, and the papers were searched until end of 2013 only. Future research needs to take advantage of the current limitations to investigate this topic and be empirically supported by theories using quantitative, qualitative or mixed-method-based research. Future studies could also develop relevant frameworks to propose an effective use of social media for creating environmental sustainability awareness in higher education.
Practical implications
Propagations of environmental sustainability awareness in higher education would be more effective with the use of social media.
Social implications
In principle, the increase of environmental awareness level would increase the students’ good behavioural conduct on environmental sustainability.
Originality/value
While the broad topic of environmental sustainability in higher education is widely discussed, the role of social media in shaping environmental sustainability awareness is still under researched. This situation provides a significant potential for exploration by sustainability researchers to craft their investigation on the effective role of social media in creating environmental awareness in higher education.
... Finally, this paper contributes to the literature on the determinants and impacts of risk aversion (Lusk and Coble 2008;Eckel et al. 2009;Cassar et al. 2011;Malmendier and Nagel 2011;Huang et al. 2013;Hanaoka et al. 2014;Cohn et al. 2015;Vieider et al. 2015;Shah and Cameron 2015) and environmental concerns. Studies in the latter field find that females and higher educated people are more concerned about the environment (Czap and Czap 2010;Tatic and Cinjarevic 2010;Urban and Ščasný 2012;Aklin et al. 2013). Interestingly, income itself does not seem to play a big role (Tatic and Cinjarevic 2010;Aklin et al. 2013). ...
... Studies in the latter field find that females and higher educated people are more concerned about the environment (Czap and Czap 2010;Tatic and Cinjarevic 2010;Urban and Ščasný 2012;Aklin et al. 2013). Interestingly, income itself does not seem to play a big role (Tatic and Cinjarevic 2010;Aklin et al. 2013). Owen et al. (2012) show that personal experiences with extreme weather events, however, positively affect preferences for environmental regulation. ...
We study the impact of the Fukushima disaster on environmental concerns, well-being, risk aversion, and political preferences in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. In these countries, overall life satisfaction did not significantly decrease, but the disaster significantly increased environmental concerns among Germans. One underlying mechanism likely operated through the perceived risk of a similar meltdown of domestic reactors. After Fukushima, more Germans considered themselves as “very risk averse.” However, drastic German policy action shut down the oldest reactors, implemented the phaseout of the remaining ones, and proclaimed the transition to renewables. This shift in energy policy contributed to the subsequent decrease in environmental concerns, particularly among women, Green party supporters, and people living in close distance to the oldest reactors. In Germany, political support for the Greens increased significantly, whereas in Switzerland and the UK, this increase was limited to people living close to reactors.
... Initially introduced to Europe by the former green parties at the turn of the 1970s, environmental issues are currently widespread among the programmes of political parties. Nevertheless, although a large body of literature exists on the individual determinants of citizen pro-environmental behaviour (Torgler and Garcías-Valiñas 2007;Franzen and Meyer, 2010;Aklin et al., 2013;Ercolano et al., 2014) and green voting (Schumacher, 2014), the reasons that explain political party attitudes towards environmental protection remain mostly uninvestigated. Selected contributions in the literature suggest that environmental concern is linked to political ideology and political competition (Fredriksson et al., 2005;Glaeser, 2014;Garmann, 2014), but to the best of our knowledge, this topic is still missing an in-depth investigation of the importance of environmentalism determinants in party platforms and the simultaneous consideration of politically related (supply-side) determinants and demand-side determinants, such as contextual The CMD and other internationally well-known data sources were used to measure the potential supply-side and demand-side determinants of party concerns for the environment. ...
... Because the content of political party electoral platforms is presumed to be strongly driven by citizen demand, the contextual features that stimulate citizen concern for the environment are also potential drivers of the importance that environment-related issues have in party manifestos. From this perspective, a number of contributions that study the determinants of citizen attitudes towards the environment offer interesting considerations (Torgler and Garcías-Valiñas, 2007;Aklin et al., 2013;Ercolano et al., 2014). ...
Why do parties offer environmental policies in their political programs? While a number of papers examine the determinants of citizens’ pro-environmental behaviour, we know little about the extent to which political parties adjust their platform towards environmentalism. We investigate this process through data provided by the Manifesto Project Dataset (CMP) for 20 European countries over the period 1970-2008. Following the literature on public concern towards environment, we examine economic, environmental and political determinants. Our findings provide evidence that political parties’ environmental concern is strongly correlated with their political ideology and with country-level economic conditions.
... concerns. Studies in the latter field find that females and higher educated people are more concerned about the environment (Czap and Czap, 2010;Tatic and Cinjarevic, 2010;Urban and Ščasný, 2012;Aklin et al., 2013). Interestingly, income itself does not seem to play a big role (Tatic and Cinjarevic, 2010;Aklin et al., 2013). ...
... Studies in the latter field find that females and higher educated people are more concerned about the environment (Czap and Czap, 2010;Tatic and Cinjarevic, 2010;Urban and Ščasný, 2012;Aklin et al., 2013). Interestingly, income itself does not seem to play a big role (Tatic and Cinjarevic, 2010;Aklin et al., 2013). Owen at al. (2012) show that personal experiences with extreme weather events, however, positively affect preferences for environmental regulation. ...
We study the impact of the Fukushima disaster on environmental concerns, well-being, risk aversion, and political preferences in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. In these countries, overall life satisfaction did not significantly decrease, but the disaster significantly increased environmental concerns among Germans. One underlying mechanism likely operated through the perceived risk of a similar meltdown of domestic reactors. After Fukushima, more Germans considered themselves as “very risk averse.” However, drastic German policy action shut down the oldest reactors, implemented the phaseout of the remaining ones, and proclaimed the transition to renewables. This shift in energy policy contributed to the subsequent decrease in environmental concerns, particularly among women, Green party supporters, and people living in close distance to the oldest reactors. In Germany, political support for the Greens increased significantly, whereas in Switzerland and the UK, this increase was limited to people living close to reactors.
... Today, people's environmental preferences for global environmental issues, such as climate change, are changing (Bouman et al. 2020;Hopwood et al. 2021). The concept of environmental preferences refers to people's attitudes and beliefs toward the environment or environmental goods and services, and environmental policies (e.g., Aklin et al. 2013;Menz and Welsch 2010;Torgler and García-Valiñas 2007;Wells and Lekies 2006). More specifically, it includes statements regarding the balance between environmental conservation and use. ...
This study evaluates people’s environmental preferences for future development scenarios, investigates the heterogeneity of their preferences, and discusses the potential conflicts using four hypothetical future development scenarios, namely the natural capital-based and compact society (NC), the natural capital-based and dispersed society (ND), the produced capital-based and compact society (PC), and the produced capital-based and dispersed society (PD). The choice of future development scenarios is an essential issue because it can alter development pathways and change the quality and quantity of natural capital in the future. However, it is still unclear what preferences people express for multiple future development scenarios. Identifying people’s preferences for future development scenarios can help identify potential conflicts in decision-making and facilitate consensus building. This study conducts a discrete choice experiment employing participants from Ishikawa Prefecture (Japan). The mixed logit and latent class logit models reveal the preference heterogeneity of the inhabitants. Additionally, using the spatial Kriging method predicts the spatial distribution of people’s environmental preferences, and the following are the findings: (1) participants generally prefer the ND scenario, although they exhibit heterogeneous preferences; (2) some groups of participants only have strongly preferred scenarios, while others have undesirable ones; (3) one group hesitates to pay additional taxes, while others are unresponsive; and (4) spatial heterogeneity in environmental preferences is suggested. Based on these results, the potential conflicts that may arise from future land-use policies and the policy implications are proposed.
... Segundo Rockström (2017) (2015), o comportamento pró-ambiental dos agricultores, pode ter relação direta com o seu nível educacional, Hyland (2015) diz que a percepção das alterações climáticas pode auxiliar na tomada de decisão pró-ambiental, dessa forma, pode-se relacionar a possibilidade do alcance dos objetivos propostos pela ISA diretamente com as hipóteses dos autores supracitados, nos quais serão testados nesta pesquisa. Aklin et al. (2013) informa que a educação é positivamente correlacionada com atitudes ambientalmente sustentáveis em diferentes contextos. Ao mesmo tempo, a percepção climática, que está ligada à forma pela qual os indivíduos acessam e compreendem as mudanças do clima, tem papel crucial sobre sua disposição em alterar práticas produtivas (PERSSON et al., 2015). ...
O livro reúne reunirá pesquisas que tratam de Educação do
campo, suas tecnologias e metodologias, a ATER e as formas de Cooperativismos. As diversas iniciativas e experiências de organizações da sociedade civil, como também de poderes públicos passam a ser pesquisadas e sistematizadas a partir dos centros de pesquisa e aparecem nos programas de pós-graduação consolidando uma importante literatura já disponível. A diversas matrizes teórico-metodológicas e vivencias aparecerão nesse volume a partir das pesquisas em curso ou finalizadas, que permitirá ainda que experiências de organizações da sociedade civil e poderes públicos sejam publicados, demonstrando a interdisciplinaridade e amplitude do tema. O volume reunirá assim campos de pesquisa que reconectam educação, ATER e as múltiplas expressões cooperativistas na perspectiva do rural baiano.
... Issues related to the individual determinants of citizens' proecological behavior and the 'green vote' have been discussed by many researchers (Torgler and Garcia-Valinas, 2007;Schumacher, de Vries and Vis, 2013;Aklin et al., 2013;Ercolano et al., 2014). Notably, when considering the effectiveness of environmental policy, the relationship between the condition of the environment and the political orientation of voters was usually estimated (Eagle et al., 2017;Facchini et al., 2017). ...
Many studies have found a positive association between liberal political views and support for environmental protection activities even though they require greater involvement of the state in market economies. However, such a conclusion is contradicted by empirical studies on pro-environmental activities with regard to the theory of planned behaviour. On the one hand, subjective norms (including the expectations of public authorities) are usually found to be insignificant or very weak drivers of ecological behaviour. On the other hand, self-efficacy (individual attitudes and beliefs in one’s capabilities) is perceived as a leading factor. This inspired us to explore the long-term effects of localism on environmental quality in Poland. Because liberalism and conservatism exist in their ‘pure’ forms, Poland is very well suited to such a study. The aim of the article is to assess the long-term impact of local and liberal orientations (with conservatism as the reference), as reflected by electoral decisions on the quality of the environment. First, the current state of the environment is measured over four dimensions (air, water, soil, and biodiversity), and the effects of environmental policies (including spatial dependence) are estimated. Subsequently, the treatment effects on the environment when a particular political orientation is adopted are estimated using multi-valued treatment effect analyses. The study confirms that local orientation is conducive to long-term environmental care. Moreover, greater coordination of environmental policies at different levels is recommended, focusing on the negative spatial dependence of local environmental expenditure.
... Since more educated individuals tend to report higher levels of SWB (Aklin et al., 2013) and more likely to engage in PEBs (Ponce et al., 2019), model 3 controls for individuals' schooling. In general, the MEs are reduced once again in each of the PEBs, especially for those who engage in water conservation, but remain statistically significant. ...
This article estimates the individuals’ non-pecuniary benefit of engaging in pro– environmental behaviors (PEB) using a large sample from Ecuador. As a novelty, we estimate a model that allows incorporating both unobserved heterogeneity in preferences and controlling for the potential endogeneity of income through instrumental variables. Although both problems have been addressed separately in the literature, we show that considering both sources of bias allows finding more accurate and credible monetary values. Our results show that subjective monetary evaluations regarding PEBs are generally overestimated (the income coefficient is underestimated), but not including unobserved heterogeneity hides important patterns for an important group of the sample with completely different preferences.
... In this study, the proportion of non-agricultural income was used to represent the income. Degree of education can affect people's environmental preferences (Aklin et al., 2013), the farmers with a higher education level tend to have a stronger environmental cognition. Farmers' land is an important resource for farmers' agricultural production, while the farmers with more scale of farmland prefer to adopt environmental production measures to protect the quality of farmland from pollution . ...
The extensive use and inadequate recycling of agricultural mulch film has caused serious environmental pollution. Studies have shown that farmers' cognition on agricultural mulch film pollution can affect mulch film recycling, but studies about farmers’ cognition on agricultural mulch film pollution is less. The sample is 2025 households in 5 provinces of China in 2018, the study is based on the theory of planned behavior, and the ordered logit model is used to analyze farmers' cognition on agricultural mulch film pollution. As shown in the results: (1) only 53.78% of farmers think that the agricultural mulch film can pollute farmland; (2) the attitude of farmers who are willing to strengthen the knowledge of environmental protection and spend money to protect the environment are positively correlated with cognition; (3) from the subjective norm, farmers who are subject to environmental government regulations and village regulations have higher cognition, but the informal institution is more effective; (4) from the perceived behavioral control, when farmers are dissatisfied with the surrounding environment, they are more likely to have higher cognition; (5) from the household characteristics, the proportion of non-agricultural income and age of household head are negatively correlated with cognition, and farmers with higher education level have higher cognition. As for the suggestions on improving the cognition of smallholder farmers, special attention should be paid to strengthening the restraint effect of village regulations on small size, large amount and scattered smallholder farmers, rather than relying on the formal institution blindly.
... Outro ponto que pode ser levantado é a infl uência de minorias no desenvolvimento de leis ambientais municipais. Esses argumentos estão em linha com a hipótese de que sociedades mais ricas têm maior potencial de adaptação a efeitos ambientais adversos e, portanto, estão menos dispostas a investir em mitigação no curto prazo (Aklin et al., 2013). ...
This paper aims to analyze the environmental efficiency of Brazilian municipalities and to relate it to a set of local socioeconomic characteristics, controlling technological heterogeneity and spatial dependence. A Metafrontier Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method has been applied to measure the efficiency, based on the Brazilian greenhouse gas emissions. Afterward we estimate a Spatial Autoregressive model (SAR) relating environmental efficiency to municipal socioeconomic characteristics. The main results show that variables such as income and HDI were positively related to the environmental efficiency. On the other hand, inequality and education showed negative relations. In addition , we found evidence of "environmental spillover" effect, which could indicate positive externalities when sustainable practices are implanted at reginal level.
... Outro ponto que pode ser levantado é a infl uência de minorias no desenvolvimento de leis ambientais municipais. Esses argumentos estão em linha com a hipótese de que sociedades mais ricas têm maior potencial de adaptação a efeitos ambientais adversos e, portanto, estão menos dispostas a investir em mitigação no curto prazo (Aklin et al., 2013). ...
Resumo Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar a eficiência ambiental dos municípios brasileiros e relacioná-la a um conjunto de características socioeconômicas locais, controlando aspectos como heterogeneidade tecnológica e dependência espacial. Para tanto, utilizou-se o método de Análise Envoltória de Dados (DEA) Metafrontier para construir o indicador, que foi baseado nas emissões de gases de efeito estufa. Em seguida, ajustou-se um modelo que relaciona eficiência ambiental, características socioeconômicas e dependência espacial (Spatial Autoregressive Model). Os principais resultados revelaram que renda per capita e IDH se relacionaram positivamente com o indicador de eficiência. Por outro lado, as variáveis desigualdade e educação mostraram relação negativa com o índice. Ademais, houve evidências de efeito “spillover ambiental” entre municípios, indicando que a criação de práticas sustentáveis em âmbito local pode produzir externalidades positivas regionalmente.
... These sensory cues underlie the perceived susceptibility to and perceived severity of air pollution. Additionally, demographic variables such as gender and age (Chuk ling Lai & Tao, 2003;Flynn, Slovic, & Mertz, 1994;Johnson, 2002), socioeconomic variables such as income, education (Aklin, Bayer, Harish, & Urpelainen, 2013;Franzen & Meyer, 2010;Inglehart, 1981Inglehart, , 1995, occupation, and expertise (Sjoeberg & Drottz-Sjoeberg, 2008;Spruijt, Knol, Torenvlied, & Lebret, 2013), and structural variables such as having children (Crighton et al., 2013;Elliott, Cole, Krueger, Voorberg, & Wakefield, 1999;Flynn et al., 1994;Johnson, 2002) and health status (Howel, Moffatt, Bush, Dunn, & Prince, 2003) all potentially influence concern. Indeed, previous research suggests that being female, employed, more knowledgeable about air pollution, and in poorer health condition, as well as having children, are associated with greater concern about air pollution (Elliott et al., 1999;Howel et al., 2003;Johnson, 2002). ...
This study evaluates the effect of the documentary Under the Dome on the concern and responsive behaviors of the public regarding air pollution in China, with two surveys conducted before and after watching the documentary. Employing difference‐in‐differences regression, this study answers two research questions: (1) Does Under the Dome change public concern about air pollution? (2) Does Under the Dome change public behaviors in response to air pollution, including protective behaviors (i.e., wearing face masks) and mitigation behaviors (i.e., reducing car driving)? We find that the information campaign (1) protects against the decline of public concern about air pollution in Beijing and (2) moderates the degree to which people's perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, and sense of self‐efficacy influence protective behaviors and moderates the degree to which people's belief in the cooperative behaviors by others influences mitigation behaviors. This study provides evidence that information campaigns of the Under the Dome type are effective in raising public awareness; however, the information campaign did not directly influence public protective and mitigation behaviors.
... In this study we focus on Brazil, a key country in global climate, biodiversity, and forest policy (e.g., Aklin et al., 2013;Held et al., 2013;Viola, 2013). The importance of climate policy stems from the fact that tropical forests constitute an enormous carbon sink. ...
Economic conditions are typically viewed as having an important influence on environmental policy. In particular, it is widely believed that under adverse economic conditions, electorates and governments prioritize economic growth and jobs over costly ecological restraint. The empirical evidence for this received wisdom, however, remains surprisingly contradictory. We contribute to this debate by studying a case where the odds of the economy-environment trade-off claim holding true should be high: an emerging economy in severe recession, and environmental policy with high short-term costs and long-term benefits. Based on a representative survey (N = 2449) in Brazil, implemented in late 2015/early 2016, we examine how ego- and socio-tropic economic conditions, both perceived and real, affect citizens’ preferences concerning the mitigation of deforestation and climate change. We find no robust evidence for an economy-environment trade-off. The main policy implication is that, from a public opinion perspective, there is considerable room for ambitious environmental policy even under adverse economic conditions.
... Since more cooperation has been demonstrated in collectivist than individualist cultures, we might expect greater adoption of pro-environmental behaviours in Brazil than in the UK. One might also expect more motivation to take pro-environmental action in Brazil than in the UK since the former have greater exposure to environmental problems (e.g., pollution, deforestation, freshwater depletion) and to diverse flora and fauna (e.g., rainforest species; Corral-Verdugo et al., 2013;Dick et al., 2014;Aklin et al., 2013). On the other hand, these countries also differ markedly in their socio-economic context, with Brazil still an industrialising country, with more economic reliance on agriculture (e.g., cattle farming, sugarcane) and lower income and literacy levels than the UK (Simões, 2011). ...
The environmental and economic imperatives to dematerialize economies, or ‘do more with less’, have been established for some years. Yet, to date, little is known about the personal drivers associated with dematerializing. This paper explores the prevalence and profile of those who are taking action to reduce consumption in different cultural contexts (UK and Brazil) and considers influences on dematerialization behaviours. We find that exemplar behaviours (avoiding buying new things and avoiding packaging) are far less common than archetypal environmental behaviours (e.g. recycling), but also that cultural context is important (Brazilians are more likely to reduce their material consumption than people in the UK). We also find that the two dematerialization behaviours are associated with different pro-environmental actions (more radical action versus green consumption, respectively); and have distinct, but overlapping, psychological (e.g. identity) and socio-demographic (e.g. education) predictors. Comparing a more traditional value-identity model of pro-environmental behaviour with a motivation-based (self-determination) model, we find that the latter explains somewhat more variance than the former. However, overall, little variance is explained, suggesting that additional factors at the personal and structural levels are important for determining these consumption behaviours. We conclude by outlining policy implications and avenues for further research.
This article is part of the themed issue ‘Material demand reduction’.
... 253). Education is vital for creating environmental awareness, as shown, e.g., in Brazil, where the level of education was found to be a strong predictor of the awareness on environmental issues [158]. However, especially rural and remote areas in DCs often have a weak education system. ...
A review on rural electrification programs and projects based on off-grid Photovoltaic (PV) systems, including Solar Pico Systems (SPS) and Solar Home Systems (SHS) in Developing Countries (DCs) was conducted. The goal was to highlight the main multidimensional drawbacks that may constrain the sustainability of these systems. Four dimensions of sustainability (institutional, economic, environmental and socio-cultural) were considered in this review. It was found that institutional flaws (such as the scarcity of durability/stability and enforcement of formal institutions, weak regulations or standards, incomplete decentralization/participation and the lack of institutional adaptability) seriously compromise the sustainability of rural electrification efforts in DCs. While the lack of an effective focalized subsidy scheme (e.g., cross-tariff scheme) for the electricity tariffs of the poor population often made projects economically unsustainable, the scarcity of environmental awareness, regulations or incentives has often turned presumably clean energy technologies into environmentally unsustainable projects. Progress regarding social acceptance, accuracy and cultural justice is urgently needed for ensuring the socio-cultural sustainability of rural electrification efforts in DCs. This review may help stakeholders to identify and (based on prior experiences) address the most severe drawbacks affecting the sustainability of rural electrification efforts in DCs.
... Indeed, Harvey's (1996) "[T]he rich are unlikely to give up an (environmental) amenity 'at any price' whereas the poor who are least able to sustain the loss are likely to sacrifice it for a trifling sum" is corroborated by quantitative studies: wealthy people are willing to pay more than poor people for a similar increase in environmental quality (Jacobsen and Hanley, 2009). By contrast, income does not influence stances towards environmental policy (Aklin et al., 2013). This contrast highlights that the variations of iWTP as a function of income include confounded effects of differing attitudes towards the environment, differing marginal utility of income and differing budget constraints. ...
Biodiversity undergoes unprecedented rates of erosion despite the important services it provides. This is considered evidence that biodiversity is undervalued. Biodiversity valuation is accordingly a prominent issue in the literature. Economic valuations are, however, largely criticized. Numerous alternatives have been introduced. Most of them involve participatory protocols aimed at producing high-quality results. Being time-consuming and expensive, it is difficult to implement and reproduce them at a large scale. We produce an easily reproducible, inexpensive survey methodology to measure impartial preference for biodiversity. We implement it in Switzerland through a mail-based survey. Our result is that biodiversity should be ranked after retirement schemes and public transportation, but before relations with foreign countries, order and security, and culture and leisure in the expanses of the State. Current expenses therefore substantially underestimate the value that Swiss people grant to biodiversity. Our new method is a viable alternative to standard economic valuation. Given the impartiality achieved, at least in the Swiss political context our estimate can be used by decision makers to assess the legitimacy of conservation programs or to gauge public support. At a philosophical level, our measure is relevant for public policies because it captures the stances that people take when they participate in public decisions.
... Education levels were positively correlated with preferences for forest conservation, which is consistent with the results of our pretest. This is also consistent with Aklin et al.'s (2013) study of the effects of education on environmental preferences in Brazil, where they found that secondary education appears to be the most important determining factor. ...
The demand for urban river rehabilitation can be measured through stated preference surveys such as choice
experiments, providing information on the welfare estimates of a particular approach. We deploy such a technique in the context of plans to rehabilitate a major river in Jakarta, Indonesia. The current plan focuses on widening and
canalizing the downstream segment of the river within Jakarta's administrative boundary. We hypothesize that
residents would demand (and thus be willing to pay for) additional components of an ecological rehabilitation program in the form of riverside park space and upstream forest conservation outside of Jakarta's jurisdiction. We develop a spatially-explicit discrete choice experiment in which households register their preferences for channel widening, park space, forest conservation, and a monthly fee to fund the rehabilitation. Using mixed logit models we find significant and substantial demand for both park space and forest conservation, with a lower bound on the total willingness to pay (WTP) of greater than US $4 million per year for park space and nearly US $6 million per year to support reforestation in the upper catchment. These estimates are based on households within the catchment, but we find that demand did not seem to decay with distance so the upper bound on total WTP could be substantially higher. We also find that household income level has a strong effect on marginal WTP for forest conservation, minimal effect on marginal WTP for park space, and that location along the river influenced WTP for park space and channel widening. This provides further evidence that there is substantial demand for river rehabilitation in developing world cities, and that choice experiments can provide information relevant to land use planning.
... The rise of environmental issues has produced many studies with students on explaining the variation in individual knowledge, awareness, attitudes and behaviors toward the environment. Aklin et al. [19] attempted to identify the main determinants which predict a person's awareness of environmental issues, while many other researches revealed the relation between environmental awareness, concern, knowledge and behavior [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. In parallel, some other researchers have investigated whether schools [1] and infusions of environmental education [28] make a difference in environmental awareness and attitudes among students. ...
This study aimed to determine the students' environmental awareness, attitude and behavior levels and factors influencing their environmental awareness, attitude and behavior. A face-to-face survey with 621 candidate graduate students in the Ondokuz Mayis University was used to collect the data. The environmental awareness, attitude and behavior were determined by the students' assessments based on a five-point Likert scale. The ordered probit procedure was used to determine factors affecting the students' environmental awareness, attitudes and behaviors. The study reveals that the candidate graduate students' environmental awareness, attitude and behavior are found to be high. The probit models showed that both environmental attitude and behavior were influenced by the environmental education and information factors, while the socio-demographic factors generally have important impacts on the students' environmental awareness as expected. While the variables of gender had the highest impacts on the students' environmental awareness, both awareness and curiosity levels towards environmental news had the highest influences on the students' environmental attitude and behavior, respectively. To increase the students' environmental literacy levels, the departments should put sufficient compulsory environment courses on their programs, and they should focus on providing their graduates with environmental attitudes and behaviors.
... Research on environmental concerns itself, too, has a long tradition, focussing on their multifaceted determinants (such as age, income, gender, type of residence, education, see e.g. Van Liere and Dunlap (1980); Aklin et al. (2013); Xiao and Dunlap (2007)). But only very few studies deal with the impact that environmental concerns have on subjective well-being (Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Gowdy, 2007;Binder and Ward, 2013). ...
... Given the mean WTP of 11-20%, this suggests an income elasticity of WTP around 0.1, which is (2). Similar to Aklin et al. (2013) and Yang et al. (2014), we find that education significantly affects an individual's WTP after controlling for income. Being more educated, e.g., having a college education instead of only a high school diploma, increases the average WTP by 0.7-1.2 ...
China has become the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. However, the Chinese public's willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation is, at best, under-researched. This study draws upon a large national survey of Chinese public cognition and attitude towards climate change and analyzes the determinants of consumers' WTP for energy-efficient and environment-friendly products. Eighty-five percent of respondents indicate that they are willing to pay at least 10 percent more than the market price for these products. The econometric analysis indicates that income, education, age and gender, as well as public awareness and concerns about climate change are significant factors influencing WTP. Respondents who are more knowledgeable and more concerned about the adverse effect of climate change show higher WTP. In comparison, income elasticity is small. The results are robust to different model specifications and estimation techniques.
... There has also been modeling of environmental policy, by Sparovek et al [17,18], studying the overall effects of the Forest Code in Brazil. While public opinion is favorable towards environmental policies in Brazil, with a significant positive correlation between environmental policy and higher education [20], there remains heavy deforestation and land use change. This trend is due to a lack of incentives for farmers to protect natural areas on their land, especially with reduced penalties for non-compliance with current conservation legislation [21,22]. ...
Agricultural expansion is causing deforestation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, converting savanna and tropical dry forest to farmland, and in 2012, Brazil’s Forest Code was revised with the government reducing deforestation restrictions. Understanding the effects of policy change on rates and locations of natural ecosystem loss is imperative. In this paper, deforestation in Minas Gerais was simulated annually until 2020 using Dinamica Environment for Geoprocessing Objects (Dinamica EGO). This system is a state-of-the-art land use and cover change (LUCC) model which incorporates government policy, landscape maps, and other biophysical and anthropogenic datasets. Three studied scenarios: (i) business as usual, (ii) increased deforestation, and (iii) decreased deforestation showed more transition to agriculture from shrubland compared to forests, and consistent locations for most deforestation. The probability of conversion to agriculture is strongly tied to areas with the smallest patches of original biome remaining. Increases in agricultural revenue are projected to continue with a loss of 25% of the remaining Cerrado land in the next decade if profit is maximized. The addition of biodiversity value as a tax on land sale prices, estimated at over $750,000,000 USD using the cost of extracting and maintaining current species ex-situ, can save more than 1 million hectares of shrubland with minimal effects on the economy of the State of Minas Gerais. With environmental policy determining rates of deforestation and economics driving the location of land clearing, site-specific protection or market accounting of externalities is needed to balance economic development and conservation.
... A common shared view claims that once a certain level of development is achieved, citizens pay greater attention to environmental amenities, leading new institutions to emerge (Arrow et al. 1995). While there is an extended literature on both, private determinants of proenvironmental behavior (Torgler and Garcías-Valiñas 2007;Aklin et al. 2013) and public preferences and green voting (see Schumacher, 2014), we know little about political parties' motivations to provide environmental policies. Although some authors suggest there is a political market for environmental issues (Graman, 2014;Kirchgässner and Schneider, 2003) and there is evidence on the political parties' concern since the 70s (Tognacci et al. 1972), the driving forces behind it remain imprecise. ...
Why do parties offer environmental policies in their political programs? While a number of papers examine the determinants of citizens' pro-environmental behaviour, we know little about the extent to which political parties adjust their platform towards environmentalism. We investigate this process through data provided by the Manifesto Project Dataset (CMP) for 20 European countries over the period 1970-2008. Following the literature on public concern towards environment, we examine economic, environmental and political determinants. Our findings provide evidence that political parties' environmental concern is strongly correlated with their political ideology and with country-level economic conditions.
... There is mixed evidence on the effect of income (Aklin et al., 2013;Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980). Inglehart himself has acknowledged the existence of competing evidences and modified the post-materialism theory by proposing an 'objective problems-subjective values' (OPSV) hypothesis (Inglehart, 1995). ...
The notion that people with higher income are more concerned about environmental problems is deeply entrenched in economics and some other disciplines. Studies have shown a positive income effect on the intention to pay for environmental improvement. Perception of environmental risk, however, follows a different pattern of variation. This paper demonstrates a negative income effect, using data extracted from a cross-national social survey involving 36 countries. An inverse relationship is observed between people’s reported income and their perception of long-term environmental risks associated with climate change, genetic modification of crops and the use of nuclear power. Lower-income individuals see the potential environmental consequences of these human interventions as extremely dangerous - more so than the higher-income ones. Richer people are relatively less concerned about the long-term environmental risks. A possible explanation is that material insecurity reinforces the feeling of risk and danger. People living under more difficult economic situation are more vulnerable and see greater danger. A key implication of these findings is that concern does not follow ability to pay. People facing higher environmental risks are potentially less able to afford risk reduction support despite they are likely to be in greater need for it.
... An exception isAklin et al. (2013) who examine the environmental preferences of Brazilians.Environ Econ Policy Stud ...
Who blames corruption for the poor enforcement of environmental laws? The answer to this question is important since corruption is an important reason why environmental policies are not properly enforced, but previous studies of environmental public opinion do not address the issue. We analyze data from a survey fielded in Brazil in June 2012, immediately preceding the Rio+20 environmental summit. We test hypotheses on income, education, and perception of corruption as a cause of poor enforcement of environmental policy. We find that wealthy individuals are more likely to associate corruption with enforcement failure than poorer Brazilians. However, education is not associated with the belief that corruption is a primary cause of enforcement failure. These results suggest that since wealthy Brazilians have a higher exposure to corruption because of their interaction with government officials, they understand the role of corruption in policy failure. Conversely, the kind of general information that education offers does not raise concern about the role of corruption in environmental policy. The results have important implications particularly in democratic societies, where governments have stronger incentives to address the problem if concerned publics associate corruption with enforcement failure.
... On the other hand, the awareness of CER through the whole industrial chain could promote the development of CER regulations. The environmental preferences of governmental policy could be induced by public opinion (Aklin et al., 2013). From this perspective, the CER regulatory policies on certain industries, as a result, need to reflect the CER demands from the majority firms within the industrial chain. ...
The intensification of agricultural production in the future must necessarily happen on a sustainable basis. Thus, the present study aimed to analyze the role of education and climate perception for the pro-environmental behavior of farmers with a focus on the recovery of degraded pastures. The willingness to adopt agricultural techniques that mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was considered as a factor of pro-environmental behavior. For the analysis, a case study was carried out with farmers whose properties are located in the river basin of Rio das Contas, Bahia. Methodologically, the work was divided into three main stages: data collection; exploratory analysis of responses regarding the willingness to adopt sustainable production techniques, a proxy used to represent pro-environmental behavior; and the analysis of a probability model (Probit). The main factors responsible for this perception of climate change identified in the study were access to formal education and technical assistance. The research showed that these two variables can promote the recovery of degraded areas, as they are able to assist in decision making in the face of climate change scenarios. It was concluded that technical assistance and schooling make farmers more willing to undertake more sustainable agricultural techniques.
This chapter mainly addresses on the importance of social media to achieve the environmental sustainability in higher education system comprised of universities, colleges, and training institutions, which is responsible for skills development, personal development, and knowledge generation. Higher education systems play a critical role to develop the values and attitudes of the individuals and to create environmental awareness about the several issues There are many environmental issues such as global warming, waste management, environmental pollution in a global community. It is a mandatory requirement to create environmental awareness about the effects of environmental hazards. Due to rapid increase in living standards and industrialization, all the individuals as well as organizations should act in environmentally responsible ways and also promote sustainable practices for the protection of the environment.
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of climate change policies and actions around the world. It documents the differences in the stringency of climate change policies across different regions of the world and looks at the populations within countries to provide an assessment of their values and perceptions of the significance of climate change. This chapter demonstrates that economic development is associated with an increased commitment to address climate change both at the country level and at the individual level. Furthermore, the results suggest that more stringent climate change mitigation policies at the macro level are often consistent with proenvironmental individual preferences at the micro level. However, the proenvironmental attitudes of individuals do not always translate into stringent environmental policies. A case study of two countries, Sweden and Turkey, is used to highlight the structural and institutional influences on environmental actions and policies. The evidence suggests that there is convergence between individual preferences for environmental concern and climate policy action in Sweden due to high levels of trust and social capital formation. In contrast, Turkish citizens are unable to engage in collective environmental actions because of high levels of distrust. Therefore, there are multiple factors to consider regarding data within and across countries and there is likely a diversity of subnational regions in terms of political institutions, democracy, social capital, public policies, and environmentalism.
Agricultural fertilizer use is widely acknowledged to be a leading cause of water pollution. Yet, no national estimates exist on the effect of fertilizer application on concentrations of agricultural pollutants in US watersheds. This paper employs a watershed‐level panel data on nitrogen and phosphorus pollution readings to examine the impact of fertilizer use on US water quality over a fifty‐five‐year time period from 1951 to 2005. Findings show that a 10% increase in the use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers leads to a 1.52% increase in the concentration of nitrogen and a 1.37% increase in the concentration of phosphorus across watersheds. Results also indicate that there exists heterogeneity in nutrient pollution elasticity estimates across eighteen US water resource regions, ranging from 0.082 to 0.733 in the case of nitrogen and from 0.036 to 0.475 in the case of phosphorus. Combining our results with prior hydrology‐based studies, we find that a 100% increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers in the Lower Mississippi water resource region expands the size of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico by roughly 3,389 square miles, equivalent to about two‐fifths of the estimated size of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
This chapter mainly addresses on the importance of social media to achieve the environmental sustainability in higher education system comprised of universities, colleges, and training institutions, which is responsible for skills development, personal development, and knowledge generation. Higher education systems play a critical role to develop the values and attitudes of the individuals and to create environmental awareness about the several issues There are many environmental issues such as global warming, waste management, environmental pollution in a global community. It is a mandatory requirement to create environmental awareness about the effects of environmental hazards. Due to rapid increase in living standards and industrialization, all the individuals as well as organizations should act in environmentally responsible ways and also promote sustainable practices for the protection of the environment.
What is the relationship between political institutions and air pollution generated by the power sector? Here we focus on the association between democracy and power generated from coal, the most polluting of all fossil fuels. Using a new dataset on coal‐fired power plants commissioned between 1980 and 2016 in 71 countries, we find that the relationship between democracy and coal varies according to the environmental Kuznets curve logic. Democratic political institutions at lower levels of economic development are correlated with increased commissioning of coal power plants, as governments seek to appeal to an electorate prioritizing economic growth and affordable energy access. As a country becomes richer, democracy comes to have a negative association with coal power, as clean air becomes a more salient issue for the public.
Reducing large-scale deforestation in commodity frontiers remains a key challenge for climate change mitigation and the conservation of biodiversity. Public and private anti-deforestation policies have been shown to effectively reduce forest loss, but the conditions under which such policies get adopted are rarely examined. Here we propose a set of conditions that we expect to be associated with the adoption of effective anti-deforestation policies in commodity frontiers. We then examine whether these conditions have influenced policy adoption in South America’s major soy-and-cattle frontiers: the Brazilian Amazon, the Cerrado, the Chaco, the Chiquitano, and Paraguay’s Atlantic Forest. By collating empirical data from diverse sources, including literature review, extensive expert interviews, and analysis of primary and secondary data, we show that the Cerrado, the Chaco, and the Chiquitano differ from the Brazilian Amazon in multiple ways that might have inhibited adoptions of effective anti-deforestation instruments. These conditions include: a higher importance of the agricultural sector within the respective countries, lower carbon stocks and species richness, higher prevalence of private land tenure, and higher baseline compliance with forest reserve regulations on private lands. We also observe that the adoption of the most effective private anti-deforestation instrument, commodity moratoria, may respond to similar conditions as those influencing the adoption of public instruments. Incentivizing public and private actors to adopt effective anti-deforestation policies in the Cerrado, Chaco, and the Chiquitano will likely be more challenging than it has been in the Brazilian Amazon.
The sustainability of socioeconomic systems is widely recognized as a key global challenge, and a social science of sustainable societies is now emerging. Social scientists have made commendable progress in quantifying the cost-effectiveness of different environmental policy instruments, explaining their diffusion across nations, and documenting the phenomenon of historical and ongoing sustainability transitions. However, social scientists should pay much more attention to the political economy of environmental policy formulation, the challenge of building coalitions that support more ambitious policies to promote sustainability, and the development of analytical models and testable hypotheses about sustainability transitions. Owing to the inherently problem-oriented nature of sustainability, the social science of sustainability must be strongly interdisciplinary, both among social sciences and with respect to the natural sciences. For the social science of sustainability to survive and thrive over time, academic researchers must both maintain the highest analytical standards and focus on research questions and answers that contribute to the solution of problems that practitioners face.
Keywords:
environmental policy;
energy policy;
sustainable development;
climate change;
biodiversity;
natural resources
Brazil faces numerous environmental challenges despite having many laws and policies in place. The implementation process of such laws and policies does not exist a majority of the time, affecting the quality of environmental governance in the country. Within the urban planning context, the City Statute law enacted in 2001 included the environmental dimension of urbanization; however, the wording of this inclusion was vague and broad. For instance, two environmental assessment planning tools of the law are not mandatory at the federal level and are without a defined scope. In this Exploration, a new framework focusing on the environmental dimension of urbanization is proposed. These two planning tools can be developed using the framework, which is based on the concept of carrying capacity and geographical information systems; it includes a combination of participatory mapping (i.e., increasing knowledge) and tactical urbanism (i.e., increasing awareness) to enhance public participation, targeting low-income populations. This combination was chosen because by increasing the knowledge and awareness of the poor who will participate in environmentalrelated projects, it will empower and allow them to exert their influence as citizens more fully.
The environmental Kuznets curve posits an inverted-U relationship between pollution and economic development. Pessimistic critics of empirically estimated curves have argued that their declining portions are illusory, either because they are cross-sectional snapshots that mask a long-run "race to the bottom" in environmental standards, or because industrial societies will continually produce new pollutants as the old ones are controlled. However, recent evidence has fostered an optimistic view by suggesting that the curve is actually flattening and shifting to the left. The driving forces appear to be economic liberalization, clean technology diffusion, and new approaches to pollution regulation in developing countries.
The demand for urban river rehabilitation can be measured through stated preference surveys such as choice experiments, providing information on the welfare estimates of a particular approach. We deploy such a technique in the context of plans to rehabilitate a major river in Jakarta, Indonesia. The current plan focuses on widening and canalizing the downstream segment of the river, but we hypothesize that residents would demand (and thus be willing to pay for) additional components of an ecological rehabilitation program in the form of riverside park space and upstream forest conservation outside of the city. We develop a spatially-explicit discrete choice experiment in which households register their preferences for channel widening, park space, forest conservation, and a monthly fee to fund the rehabilitation. Using mixed logit models we find significant and substantial demand for both park space and forest conservation, with a lower bound on the total willingness to pay (WTP) of greater than US $4 million per year for park space and nearly US $6 million per year to support reforestation in the upper catchment. These estimates are based on households within the catchment, but we find that demand did not seem to decay with distance so the upper bound on total WTP could be substantially higher. We also find that household income level has a strong effect on marginal WTP for forest conservation, minimal effect on marginal WTP for park space, and that location along the river influenced WTP for park space and channel widening. This provides further evidence that there is substantial demand for river rehabilitation in developing world cities, and that choice experiments can provide information relevant to land use planning.
A common argument for the lack of economic reform in developing countries is popular opposition. If current economic policies are dysfunctional, could information about alternatives sway the voters? We examine if a simple argument emphasizing the need to increase electricity prices for improved supply can change public opinion in the case of India’s power sector reforms. The evidence comes from a survey experiment in rural Uttar Pradesh, which is both India’s largest state and has one of the lowest levels of household electrification. As expected, people respond to information about the relationship between electricity pricing,
capacity investment, and reliability of supply by increasing their support for higher prices. However, no corresponding increase is observed for privatization of electricity generation. For external validity, we analyze an existing national survey on electricity privatization from 2004–2005, finding patterns that support our argument.
In the least developed countries, unequal access to infrastructure is a major form of inequality. We examine the conditions under which unequal electricity access causes dissatisfaction. The question is important because grievances could prompt demands for policy change. We argue that feelings of relative deprivation both cause dissatisfaction and create hope for improvement. Empirically, we analyze household survey data from five East African countries. All else constant, households living close to a power line are less satisfied with their lighting solution but also have more hope for improvement. Because household lighting is the most important use for electricity in a poor household, this supports the relative deprivation hypothesis. Households that are reminded of their deprivation by the power line are both less satisfied and believe something can be done to solve the problem. To inform policy, we also show that the proximity of a power line decreases the household's interest in solar home systems as an alternative to grid electrification, whereas valuation for solar lanterns seems to be increasing. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Dunlap and Van Liere's New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale, published in 1978, has become a widely used measure of proenvironmental orientation. This article develops a revised NEP Scale designed to improve upon the original one in several respects: ( 1 ) It taps a wider range of facets of an ecological worldview, ( 2 ) It offers a balanced set of pro- and anti-NEP items, and ( 3 ) It avoids outmoded terminology. The new scale, termed the New Ecological Paradigm Scale, consists of 15 items. Results of a 1990 Washington State survey suggest that the items can be treated as an internally consistent summated rating scale and also indicate a modest growth in pro-NEP responses among Washington residents over the 14 years since the original study.
Tertiary education, seen as an indicator of new class and/or highly developed cognitive capacities, is a key characteristic of environmental activists and supporters. The relationship between higher education and environmental activism can be usefully explored through analyses of nationally representative survey data from Australia, and various aspects of education can be operationalised, including social background, cultural consumption, and level and type of tertiary qualifications. Controlling for other factors, tertiary education can be shown to be a moderate predictor of joining environmental groups, but to be far more important for explaining environmental activism. The propensity to be environmentally active is fostered through education in the more ‘radical’ humanities disciplines. The results of such an enquiry highlight the salience of an ‘intellectual’ status category as a base of environmental activism.
Using data provided by the 1993 International Social Survey Programme, the authors examine the relationship between economic factors, values, and environmental attitudes both at the societal level and the individual level. They tested the hypothesis derived from Inglehart that postmaterialist values mediate the relationship between economics and support for the environment. In a multilevel analysis, they also explored whether the relationship between individuals’ income and their attitudes toward the environment varies as a function of societal-level indicators. Results demonstrate that economic factors predicted proenvironmental attitudes at the societal level and less so at the individual level, but at neither level was the influence of economic factors mediated through postmaterialist values. Further, a society’s recent economic growth, but not current levels of economic development, predicted to what extent individuals’ proenvironmental views were linked to their personal economic resources.
Studies of public opinion on environmental issues have been influenced by theories of class conflict and of value change resulting from economic security, but not much by dependency theories. This paper argues that the economic dependence of developing nations on wealthier nations and international lending institutions can substantially affect public opinion within developing nations. Specifically, in developing nations, citizens' awareness of their country's dependence on foreign investment and loans, and of the state's limited sovereignty over domestic environmental issues, can combine to tamp down national support for and knowledge of environmental campaigns even when such campaigns find strong local support, and even when environmental concern is generally strong. A review of two environmental movements and of public opinion in Turkey since the early 1980s suggests that an explanation based on dependency theory, rather than on theories of class conflict or postmaterialism, can best account for how economic processes influence public opinion.
Brazil has a long history in the development of ethanol for use as a liquid fuel for vehicles. They have developed one of most efficient and economical systems for producing ethanol in the world. Brazil provides an example that many other countries would like to emulate. Using ethanol as a vehicle fuel has significant potential air quality impacts. This paper will review the available air quality and vehicle emissions data in Brazil, specifically focusing on vehicle related pollutants that may be impacted by the use of large quantities of ethanol in the fuel. The atmospheric concentrations of acetaldehyde (CH3CHO) and ethanol in Brazil are much higher than those in other areas of the world, while the concentrations of the single ring aromatic compounds and small carboxylic acids are more typical of observations elsewhere. Acetaldehyde and ethanol increase in vehicle emissions and nitrogen oxides (NOx) may increase when ethanolfuels are used. Both CH3CHO and NOx are very important contributors to photochemical air pollution and ozone (O3) formation. There are very significant O3 air quality problems in Brazil, most studied in the larger cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. These are issues that must be evaluated for other areas of the world that are considering the use of high ethanol content vehicle fuels.
This article discusses the determinants and the development of public concern for the state of the natural environment. First,
we review some theoretical approaches that try to explain individual as well as cross-national differences in environmental
attitudes. Particularly, we discuss Inglehart's theory of post-materialism, Dunlap and Mertig's globalization explanation,
and the prosperity hypothesis. Second, we test these hypotheses by applying multilevel analysis to the International Social
Survey Programme (ISSP) data from the years 1993 and 2000. The results support, above all, the prosperity hypothesis. Individuals
with higher relative income within countries display higher levels of environmental concern than their compatriots, and additionally,
more concern is reported in wealthier countries than in poorer nations. The results indicate that environmental concern is
also closely associated with post-materialistic attitudes and various socio-demographic variables. Comparing the environmental
concern measured in the ISSP in 1993 with that in 2000 shows that environmental concern has more or less stabilized since
the early 1990s in the countries under scrutiny.
A large literature in international political economy views individuals’ trade policy preferences as a function of the income effects of economic openness. We argue that the expected environmental consequences of free trade play a noteworthy and underappreciated role for protectionist attitudes that has not been noted so far. We use unique Swiss survey data that contains measures of individuals’ environmental concerns and different aspects of trade policy preferences to examine whether those who are more concerned about the environment also hold more protectionist trade policy preferences. Our results support this expectation. Individuals who are more concerned about the environment tend to think that globalization has more negative than positive effects, more strongly support jobs-related protectionism, and place more emphasis on aspects that go beyond price and quality when evaluating foreign products. Our results suggest that also the expected environmental consequences of free trade matter for trade policy preferences and not just the potential effects on the domestic wage distribution.
It is widely assumed that public concern for environmental quality is dependent on affluence, and is therefore stronger in wealthy nations than in poor nations. This assumption is tested via results from a 1992 international survey conducted by the George H. Gallup International Institute that obtained data on a wide range of environmental perceptions and opinions from citizens in 24 economically and geographically diverse nations. Aggregate, national-level scores for a variety of measures of public concern for environmental quality were created and correlated with per capita gross national product. Although the results vary considerably depending upon the measure, overall national affluence is more often negatively rather than positively related to citizen concern for environmental quality—contradicting conventional wisdom.
Dunlap and Van Liere's New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale, published in 1978, has become a widely used measure of proenvironmental orientation. This article develops a revised NEP Scale designed to improve upon the original one in several respects: (1) It taps a wider range of facets of an ecological worldview, (2) It offers a balanced set of pro- and anti-NEP items, and (3) It avoids outmoded terminology. The new scale, termed the New Ecological Paradigm Scale, consists of 15 items. Results of a 1990 Washington State survey suggest that the items can be treated as an internally consistent summated ratingscale and also indicate a modest growth in pro-NEP responses among Washington residents over the 14 years since the original study.
In recent years, economists have been using socio-economic and socio-demographic characteristics to explain self-reported individual happiness or satisfaction with life. Using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), we employ data disaggregated at the individual and local level to show that while these variables are important, consideration of amenities such as climate, environmental and urban conditions is critical when analyzing subjective well-being. Location-specific factors are shown to have a direct impact on life satisfaction. Most importantly, however, the explanatory power of our happiness function substantially increases when the spatial variables are included, highlighting the importance of the role of the spatial dimension in determining well-being.
This paper reports an evaluation of existing knowledge regarding the social bases of public concern with environmental quality. First, five popular hypotheses asserting relationships between environmental concern and eight demographic and social variables are reviewed, with particular attention paid to the theoretical explanations offered in support of each hypothesized relationship. Second, the results of 21 relevant studies are evaluated to determine the degree to which the empirical evidence supports the hypothesized relationships. Third, implications of the results of the review for future research are discussed.
New research on urban air pollution casts doubt on the conventional view of the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality. This view holds that pollution automatically increases until societies reach middle-income status because poor countries have neither the institutional capacity nor the political commitment necessary to regulate polluters. Some policymakers and researchers have cited this model (called the"environmental Kuznets curve,"or EKC) when arguing that developing countries should"grow first, clean up later."However, new evidence suggests that the EKC model is misleading because it mistakenly assumes that strong environmental governance is not possible for poor countries. As the authors show in this paper, the empirical relationship between pollution and income becomes much weaker when measures of governance are added to the analysis. Their results also suggest that previous research has underestimated the effect of geographic vulnerability (climate and terrain factors) on air quality. The authors find that weak governance and geographic vulnerability alone can account for the crisis levels of air pollution in many developing country cities. When these factors are combined with income and population effects, the authors have a sufficient explanation for the fact that some cities already have air quality comparable to levels in OECD urban areas. To summarize, their results suggest that the maxim"grow first, clean up later"is too simplistic. Appropriate urban growth strategies can steer development toward cities with lower geographic vulnerability, and governance reform can reduce air pollution significantly, long before countries reach middle-income status.
With increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are embarked on an unprecedented experiment with an uncertain outcome for the future of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol serves as an initial step through 2012 to mitigate the threats posed by global climate change. A second step is needed, and policy-makers, scholars, business people, and environmentalists have begun debating the structure of the successor to the Kyoto agreement. Written by a team of leading scholars in economics, law, and international relations, this book contributes to this debate by examining the merits of six alternative international architectures for global climate policy. Architectures for Agreement offers the reader a uniquely wide-ranging menu of options for post-Kyoto climate policy, with a concern throughout to learn from past experience in order to maximize opportunities for future success in the real, ‘second-best’ world. It will be an essential reference for scholars, policy-makers, and students interested in climate policy.
In our article entitled “The Social Bases of Environmental Concern: A Review of Hypotheses, Explanations and Empirical Evidence”
(POQ 44:181–97), two rows of correlations were reversed in Table 1. Under the study by Van Liere and Dunlap, 1978, figures for
the environmental funding scale appear where figures for the environmental regulations scale should be, and vice versa. We
regret the error and hope it has not caused undue confusion for anyone using these data.
The environmental Kuznets curve posits an inverted-U relationship between pollution and economic development. Pessimistic critics of empirically estimated curves have argued that their declining portions are illusory, either because they are cross-sectional snapshots that mask a long-run "race to the bottom" in environmental standards, or because industrial societies will continually produce new pollutants as the old ones are controlled. However, recent evidence has fostered an optimistic view by suggesting that the curve is actually flattening and shifting to the left. The driving forces appear to be economic liberalization, clean technology diffusion, and new approaches to pollution regulation in developing countries.
Increased knowledge about the environment is assumed to change environmental attitudes, and both environmental knowledge and attitudes are assumed to influence environmental policy. However, little research has focused on public environmental knowledge or the relationship between knowledge and environmental attitudes. This paper uses telephone survey data from 680 Kentucky residents to address this gap in the literature. Specifically, this analysis examines how environmental knowledge and attitudes are related sociodemographic factors (gender, age, education, income and residence). As in similar research, the respondents to this survey did not score well on the measures of environmental knowledge. Environmental knowledge is found to be consistently and positively related to environmental attitudes, although the relationship is not especially strong. With the correlation of knowledge and attitudes, the low level of environmental knowledge has disturbing implications for environmental policy.
We examine the reduced-form relationship between per capita income and various environmental indicators. Our study covers
four types of indicators: urban air pollution, the state of the oxygen regime in river basins, fecal contamination of river
basins, and contamination of river basins by heavy metals. We find no evidence that environmental quality deteriorates steadily
with economic growth. Rather, for most indicators, economic growth brings an initial phase of deterioration followed by a
subsequent phase of improvement. The turning points for the different pollutants vary, but in most cases they come before
a country reaches a per capita income of $8000.
In the United States, both scholars and practitioners have repeatedly emphasized the importance of “issue framing” for garnering public support for climate change policy. However, the debate frequently overlooks the importance of counter frames. For every framing attempt by advocates of climate policy, there will be a counter frame by the opponents of climate policy. How do counter frames influence the effectiveness of issue framing as a communication strategy? To answer this question, we report results from a survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of 1000 Americans on clean energy policy, a key policy issue in the public debate on climate change in the United States. Overall, we find that different combinations of positive and negative frames have remarkably little effect on support for clean energy policy. A follow-up on-line survey experiment with a convenience sample of 2000 Americans suggests that the counter frames are responsible for undermining the effects of the original frames.
Theories which account for the support of 'post-material' values in terms of post-war affluence and security are found to be inadequate for explaining the high support for post-materialism amongst environmentalists and equally low support amongst industrialists. An alternative theory relating values to political socialization is put forward.
The responsiveness of government policies to citizens' preferences is a central concern of various normative and empirical theories of democracy. Examining public opinion and policy data for the United States from 1935 to 1979, we find considerable congruence between changes in preferences and in policies, especially for large, stable opinion changes on salient issues. We present evidence that public opinion is often a proximate cause of policy, affecting policy more than policy influences opinion. One should be cautious, however, about concluding that democratic responsiveness pervades American Politics.
Policies designed to solve environmental problems are unlikely to succeed unless they have broad public support, but the motives for mass support are poorly understood. The problem is global in scope, but most of the relevant public opinion research done so far has been carried out in advanced industrial societies, usually Western democracies. Moreover, much of this research is limited to the tip of the iceberg, focusing on what people think about environmental problems without probing into why they think it or how deeply they are committed.
The analysis of mass attitudes toward environmental problems in this article uses evidence from representative national surveys of countries representing the entire developmental spectrum, from rich to poor nations, including not only Western democracies but authoritarian regimes and recently emerging democracies from the former communist bloc. The data come from the 1990–93 World Values survey, carried out in 43 countries containing 70% of the world's population. Our goal is to determine why given publics are—or are not—sufficiently concerned about environmental problems that they are willing to make financial sacrifices and undertake other actions in order to help protect the environment.
In 2010 and 2011, Republicans and Democrats proposed mandating clean
power generation in the electricity sector. To evaluate public support
for a national clean energy standard (NCES), we conducted a nationally
representative survey that included randomized treatments on the sources
of eligible power generation and programme costs. We find that the
average US citizen is willing to pay US$162 per year in higher
electricity bills (95% confidence interval: US$128-260), representing a
13% increase, in support of a NCES that requires 80% clean energy by
2035. Support for a NCES is lower among non-whites, older individuals
and Republicans. We also employ our statistical model, along with census
data for each state and Congressional district, to simulate voting
behaviour on a NCES by Members of Congress assuming they vote
consistently with the preferences of their median voter. We estimate
that Senate passage of a NCES would require an average household cost
below US$59 per year, and House passage would require costs below US$48
per year. The results imply that an `80% by 2035' NCES could pass both
chambers of Congress if it increases electricity rates less than 5% on
average.
Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. An empirical study found no support for this position. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.
This article describes Brazil's role in the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Brazil has a large stake in the climate change issue because some of its national economic, social, and security interests are contingent on the growth of its energy sector and development of the Amazon region. Section one provides an overview of the ongoing climate change negotiations. Section two provides background on Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions, which stem primarily from deforestation of the Amazon. Section three describes Brazil's interests and negotiating positions with respect to three key issues: (a) emissions-reduction responsibilities; (b) protocol mechanisms; and (c) land-use change and forestry. The concluding section will then assess Brazil's contributions in terms of both achieving an accord that will slow global warming and promoting Brazilian national interests.
A social-psychological model is developed to examine the proposition that environmentalism represents a new way of thinking. It presumes that action in support of environmental quality may derive from any of three value orientations: egoistic, social-altruistic, or biospheric, and that gender may be implicated in the relation between these orientations and behavior. Behavioral intentions are modeled as the sum across values of the strength of a value times the strength of beliefs about the consequences of environmental conditions for valued objects. Evidence from a survey of 349 college students shows that beliefs about consequences for each type of valued object independently predict willingness to take political action, but only beliefs about consequences for self reliably predict willingness to pay through taxes. This result is consistent with other recent findings from contingent valuation surveys. Women have stronger beliefs than men about consequences for self, others, and the biosphere, but there is no gender difference in the strength of value orientations.
Recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC)—the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages. These studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators. Results imply that EKCs may exist for a number of cases. However, the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and/or lifestyle changes. Significantly, more consumption-based measures, such CO2 emissions and municipal waste, for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control, show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income. By considering consumption and trade patterns, the author re-examines the concept of the EKC and proposes the use of alternative, consumption-based measures of environmental impact. The author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption.
The randomized response technique (RRT) is designed to increase respondents' willingness to answer truthfully questions of a sensitive or socially undesirable nature. This study tested the hypothesis that the difference between the proportion of "yes" responses obtained under self-administered direct questioning and the proportion of "yes" responses obtained under an RRT procedure would be related to the social desirability of a "yes" response to the question. The hypothesis was confirmed by data from 404 undergraduates; the RRT may provide more valid responses to items of a socially desirable and undesirable nature. The RRT deserves more attention because it can circumvent biases due to untruthful responding, demand characteristics, and evaluation apprehension as well as assure the confidentiality of the data. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We study the effects of policy-specific public opinion on state adoption of policies affecting gays and lesbians, and the factors that condition this relationship. Using national surveys and advances in opinion estimation, we create new estimates of state-level support for eight policies, including civil unions and nondiscrimination laws. We differentiate between responsiveness to opinion and congruence with opinion majorities. We find a high degree of responsiveness, controlling for interest group pressure and the ideology of voters and elected officials. Policy salience strongly increases the influence of policy-specific opinion (directly and relative to general voter ideology). There is, however, a surprising amount of noncongruence—for some policies, even clear supermajority support seems insufficient for adoption. When noncongruent, policy tends to be more conservative than desired by voters; that is, there is little progay policy bias. We find little to no evidence that state political institutions affect policy responsiveness or congruence.
Objective
This study assesses competing macro-level explanations of national-level environmental concern. Drawing on previous research, we test the effects of national affluence, environmental degradation, and world society integration on various dimensions of environmental concern.Method
We utilize factor analysis to separate distinct dimensions of concern. Then, we estimate bivariate correlations using data from the latest (fifth) wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) and a multivariate panel regression model using data from four WVS waves (1990–2008).ResultsBivariate correlations reveal inconsistent relationships across the various dimensions of environmental concern. The panel analysis suggests that environmental degradation is positively associated with environmental concern expressed as willingness to pay higher taxes, affluence is either negatively or not associated, and international nongovernmental organizations are not significantly associated.Conclusion
Environmental conditions significantly influence levels of environmental concern around the world. It should not be assumed that affluence is the determining factor in global environmental concern.
Acknowledging the differential ability of individuals to privately mitigate the consequences of pollution is essential for an understanding of demands for regulation of the environment and of trade in dirty goods, and for analysis of the implications of these demands for equilibrium policy choices. In a small open economy with exogenous policy, we first explain how private mitigation results in an unequal distribution of the health consequences of pollution in a manner consistent with epidemiologic studies, and consequently how the benefits and costs of trade in dirty goods interact with choices concerning private mitigation to polarize the interests of citizens concerning environmental stringency. The economy is then embedded in a broader political economy setting, and simulated to investigate the role of private mitigation in the determination of policy choices. We show that when citizens can effectively choose between costly collective and costly private alternatives for pollution control, the same polarization of interests underlies equilibrium policy choices concerning environmental regulation and trade openness in democratic and autocratic regimes.
Scholars believe that mass partisanship in Brazil is comparatively weak. Using evidence from a 2002 national survey, however, this study finds that the aggregate level of party identification actually falls only slightly below the world average and exceeds levels found in many newer democracies. Yet this finding is misleading, because the distribution of partisanship is skewed toward only one party, the PT. This trend results from a combination of party organization and recruitment efforts and individual motivation to acquire knowledge and become involved in politicized social networks. Partisanship for other parties, however, derives substantially from personalistic attachments to party leaders. This finding has implications for current debates about the status of parties in Brazil. Also important is the impact of the 2005 corruption scandal implicating the PT and President Lula da Silva's administration.
A review of recent research (1988 to 1998) on gender differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors found that, contrary to past inconsistencies, a clearer picture has emerged: Women report stronger environmental attitudes and behaviors than men. Additional evidence of gender differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors was also supported across age (Study 1) and across 14 countries (Study 2). As a single variable, the effect of gender on proenvironmental behavior was consistently stronger than on environmental attitudes. Explanations for gender differences in environmentalism were examined in Study 3. It was found that compared to males, females had higher levels of socialization to be other oriented and socially responsible. Implications for theory, social action, and policy are discussed.
Analysis of rural households and environmental resources is beset by inadequate data, especially in Africa. Using purpose-collected panel data from Zimbabwe, we demonstrate seven empirical regularities in the rural poverty-environment relationship. Most important, environmental resources make a significant contribution to average rural incomes. Poorer households also depend heavily on these resources, which contribute c.40% to their incomes. Richer households, however, use greater quantities of environmental resources in total. Finally, considerable differentiation exists in the economic characteristics of environmental goods. These results demonstrate the considerable economic significance of environmental resources to rural households. Surveys which ignore them miscalculate rural incomes and welfare.
We empirically test existing theories on the provision of public goods, in particular air quality, using data on sulfur dioxide (SO2) concentrations from the Global Environment Monitoring Projects for 107 cities in 42 countries from 1971 to 1996. The results are as follows: First, we provide additional support for the claim that the degree of democracy has an independent positive effect on air quality. Second, we find that among democracies, presidential systems are more conducive to air quality than parliamentary ones. Third, in testing competing claims about the effect of interest groups on public goods provision in democracies we establish that labor union strength contributes to lower environmental quality, whereas the strength of green parties has the opposite effect.
The conventional environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) model holds that pollution inevitably increases until societies reach middle-income status, because poor countries do not have the institutional capacity or political will to regulate polluters. Some policy makers and researchers have cited the EKC model when arguing that developing countries should “grow first and clean up later.” However, new evidence suggests that this argument is incorrect because it mistakenly assumes that strong environmental governance is not possible for poor countries. This paper extends the EKC model to include a new measure of environmental governance, as well as a detailed accounting of geographic vulnerability (climate and terrain factors). We find that these two factors can account for much of the observed variation in developing-country air pollution levels.
This paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy: property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands. Moreover, deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters. Landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk. Squatters invade land plots, clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles. A particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the Brazilian context. It is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures. Principal component analysis allows synthesising such information. An econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988–2000 period and the nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. The hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed. This result questions the modality of the Brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures.
Large numbers of people living in and around protected areas are highly dependent on the natural resources. However, simply excluding them from the area management has always inevitably resulted in conflicts. We conducted a case study of the Protected Area of Jinyun Mountain (PJM) in China to evaluate social context variables, environmental attitudes, and perceptions regarding protected area-community conflicts. Data were collected through questionnaire surveys administered to four stakeholder groups (i.e. local farmers, government staff, business persons, and tourists). A total of 112 questionnaires were completed in December 2008, after the Sichuan Earthquake. The questionnaire consisted of three parts, social context (gender, race, age, income, and education level), protected area-community conflicts, and environmental attitudes. The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scores, which were employed to evaluate environmental attitudes, differed significantly among the stakeholder groups (P<0.01). Specifically, government staff reported the highest and business persons did the lowest. Among the five items evaluated, anti-exemptionalism received the lowest score, while nature's balance did the highest. Evaluation of the protected area-community relationship indicated that harmony and conflict both exist in the PJM, but have different forms among different stakeholders, and seem to be opposite between government staff and local farmers. Among the indexes, tourism primarily contributed to the harmonious aspect, while collection of NTFPs did to the conflicting one. Conflict scores were positively related to age and negatively related to education level. Respondents with higher NEP scores were more partial to the park management. Besides, the respondents with higher annual incomes tended to support the policy of harmonizing the relationship and lessening the harm of local communities to the area. To promote proenvironmental attitudes and alleviate the protected area-community conflicts, we recommend improving environmental education, establishing community co-management, and launching substitute sources of cash for traditional cultivation.