A Multinational Examination of the Role of the Dominant Social Paradigm in Environmental Attitudes of University Students

This study examined the difference between environmental attitudes of university students in England, Denmark, and the United States. The results indicate that there is a significant relationship between attitudes toward technology, politics, and economics, the primary elements of the dominant social paradigm (DSP), and environmental attitudes. Specifically, as beliefs in the elements of the DSP increase, the perception of the existence of environmental problems decreases. As a result of this decrease, perceived changes necessary to alleviate environmental problems also decreases. The results also indicate that there is a direct relationship between the DSP and perceived change. The policy implications of this result suggest that what is needed is not only increased concern for the environment, but also, education about the DSP and its effect on the environment. Individuals may then break the cycles of technological advance, increased consumption, and reform politics, all of which appear to be complicit in environmental decline.

[1]  S. Schwartz.  Are There Universal Aspects in the Structure and Contents of Human Values , 1994 .

[2]  P. Stern,et al.  Social Structural and Social Psychological Bases of Environmental Concern , 1998 .

[3]  N. Schmitt.  Uses and abuses of coefficient alpha. , 1996 .

[4]  Hans Jørn Juhl,et al.  Values, environmental attitudes, and buying of organic foods , 1995 .

[5]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[6]  A. Macintyre,et al.  Whose Justice? Which Rationality? , 1990 .

[7]  Robert L. Heilbroner,et al.  The Nature and Logic of Capitalism , 1985 .

[8]  Frederick H. Buttel,et al.  Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy. , 1987 .

[9]  I. Balderjahn,et al.  Personality variables and environmental attitudes as predictors of ecologically responsible consumption patterns , 1988 .

[10]  A. Dobson.  Green Political Thought , 1990 .

[11]  D. Armor.  Theta Reliability and Factor Scaling , 1973 .

[12]  Daniel Sommer Robinson,et al.  The Idea Of Progress , 1920 .

[13]  G. Hardin,et al.  The Tragedy of the Commons , 1968, Green Planet Blues.

[14]  P. Ehrlich,et al.  Ark II; social response to environmental imperatives , 1973 .

[15]  Herman E. Daly,et al.  Valuing the earth : economics, ecology, ethics , 1993 .

[16]  W. Heijman.  Steady-State Economics , 1998 .

[17]  P. Stern,et al.  Value Orientations, Gender, and Environmental Concern , 1993 .

[18]  J. P. Peter.  Reliability: A Review of Psychometric Basics and Recent Marketing Practices , 1979 .

[19]  C. B. Macpherson.  The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke , 1962 .

[20]  Frederick Ferré.  Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity: Prologue to a Political Theory of the Steady State , 1982 .

[21]  M. Sagoff,et al.  The Economy of the Earth: The Allocation and Distribution of Resources , 2007 .

[22]  Richard A. Soloway,et al.  The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke by C. B. Macpherson (review) , 1963, Canadian Historical Review.

[23]  J. Dryzek.  Democracy in Capitalist Times: Ideals, Limits, and Struggles , 1997 .

[24]  P. Stern,et al.  The New Ecological Paradigm in Social-Psychological Context , 1995 .

[25]  J. Swaney.  Elements of a Neoinstitutional Environmental Economics , 1987, Evolutionary Economics.

[26]  T. Kuhn.  The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. , 1996 .

[27]  Andrew McLaughlin.  The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology , 1987 .

[28]  C. Sunstein.  Free markets and social justice , 1997 .

[29]  Craig Locatis,et al.  Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology , 1994, J. Comput. High. Educ..

[30]  R. Eckersley,et al.  Environmentalism And Political Theory: Toward An Ecocentric Approach , 1992 .

[31]  Neil Postman,et al.  Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology , 1993 .

[32]  Michael Reinhard,et al.  The Idea of Progress , 1920, The Hospital.

[33]  John Rawls,et al.  政治自由主义 = Political liberalism , 2000 .

[34]  B. Bürgenmeier.  Economy, Environment and Technology: A Socioeconomic Approach , 1994 .

[35]  Robert W. Loftin.  The Arrogance of Humanism , 1981 .

[36]  S. Cotgrove.  Catastrophe or cornucopia: The environment, politics, and the future , 1982 .

[37]  W. Ophuls.  Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity: Prologue to a Political Theory of the Steady State , 1977 .

[38]  Suzanne C. Beckmann,et al.  Review and Critical Assessment of Research on Marketing and the Environment , 1998 .

[39]  W. Ophuls.  Ecology and the politics of scarcity , 1977 .

[40]  R. Dunlap,et al.  The “New Environmental Paradigm” , 1978 .