Chapter 3 - Environmental Attitudes, Appraisals, Assessments Flashcards
Components of environmental attitudes
Attitudes, in general, are usually said to have 3 components - cognitive, affective, and conative
What is environmental attitude?
An individual’s concern for the physical environment as something that is worthy of protection, understanding, or enhancement
Cognitive components
Includes what an individual knows or thinks about an environment
Affective component
Includes one’s emotions and feelings about an environment
Conative component
Refers to one’s behavioural intentions toward an environment
Preservation attitudes
Preservation attitudes are connected to pro-environmental behaviour
Utilization attitudes
Connected to economic liberalism, which relies on the idea that resources exist to be used and developed.
Theory of planned behaviour
If a person is to act in an environmentally friendly manner, several factors must precede it. The person first must have had the interaction to act in that way. It requires 3 things … a positive attitude toward the act, the belief that this is the normal or usual way to act, and the belief that one has sufficient control over the situation to be able to engage in the pro-environmental action.
What is a descriptive norm?
What people think is the usual thing to do
Values-belief-norm (VBN) model
The chain leading to pro-environmental behaviour begins with a person’s values. The more biospheric, the more altruistic, and the less egotistic are one’s general values,
New ecological paradigm
A worldwide that envisions the planet as a delicate, threatened, and interconnected system
What are the 4 actions that can be taken under VBN?
- Environmental activism
- Public non-activist behaviours - writing letters or attending meetings
- Private behaviours - recycling and choosing public transport
- Actions within an organization - starting a recycling program at work
The Maloney-Ward Ecology Inventory
Contains 45 items arranged in 4 subscales:
- Affect - relates to the affective component of attitudes
- Knowledge - to the cognitive development
- Verbal Commitment - measures what respondent say they will do for conservation
- Actual Commitment - asks them to report what they have actually done
Weigel Environmental Concern Scale
16 item scale without separate subscale
The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP)
15 item measure of agreement with a general “planet Earth” perspective
Environmental worry scale
- Shifts from concern to pessimism to worry - it was developed to to assess worker anxiety about the effects of their exposure to organic solvents
Generalized environmental ethic
Persons who have pro-environment attitudes in more than one domain
Gender based concerns about the environment
- Women usually report more concern for the environment - but they don’t necessarily do more about it
What is “age effect”?
As people get older they are less interested in the environment
What is the cohort effect?
This is not necessarily people of the same age … but by events that had more of an impact on one age group than another
What is era effect?
The times are changing; that the overall political-social climate is growing more conservative, so that everyone is less concerned about the environment than they used to be.
Ecocentrism
The belief that nature deserves protection without regard for human costs and benefits
