The NEP scale: measuring ecological attitudes/worldviews in an African context

Given the significance of human behavior as a major driver of most environmental problems, it is generally agreed that efforts to promote global ecological and economic sustainability must now include attempts to understand public perceptions of, and attitudes toward, environmental issues. Research findings generally indicate that attitudes are important determinants of ecological behaviors, and over time, scientists have strived to develop sound measurement instruments for studying public environmental attitudes. Of these attitude measures, the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale stands out as being the most widely accepted with documented validity and reliability. In this study, the NEP scale was used to examine environmental attitudes among 355 university students in Ibadan, Nigeria. Overall, the Nigerian students were found to have a lower endorsement of the pro-ecological ideologies included in the NEP compared with similar samples from other cultural contexts. However, a strong consensus was observed among the sample on the fragility of nature’s balance and possibility of eco-crisis facets of the NEP. The findings of the study are discussed in the context of relevant Nigerian social and cultural factors, and recommendations for future research are provided.     

Diversity of Television Exposure and its Association with the Cultivation of Concern for Environmental Risks

Cultivation theory claims that individuals who watch a greater amount of television are more likely to accept the representation of reality as presented on television. This study introduces the variable of exposure diversity and attempts to investigate if the diversity of television channels viewed plays a significant role beyond the amount of television viewed in the cultivation of concern about environmental risks. Data from the 2002 annual Life Style Study conducted by Synovate for DDB-Chicago was paired with a corresponding content analysis of environmental television coverage. Ordinary-Least-Squares regression suggests that exposure diversity is associated with concern of environmental risks above and beyond both the effects of the amount of television watched and individual differences, suggesting the variable of exposure diversity holds promise for further explicating cultivation theory.     

Who is the Adolescent Environmentalist? Environmental Attitudes,Identity, Media Usage and Communication Orientation

There has been an increase in scholarly attention to adolescents’ environmental attitudes; however, only a small number of empirical studies address the Adolescent Environmentalist’s (AE) personal and collective identity, media usage, and communication orientation. In this study, we investigate differences in young people (aged 12–17) who identify themselves as environmentalists, or the AEs, and those who do not drawing from a national sample of 1096 youth. Results show AEs significantly differ from their peers. The AEs have a different environmental value set, report greater self-confidence and influence among peers, support the stronger display of citizenship behaviors, follow certain news topics more, use and discuss the news more with a variety of others, and report engaging in more dialogue and persuasion.     

“Not All Environmentalists Are Like That … ”: Unpacking the Negative and Positive Beliefs and Perceptions of Environmentalists

ABSTRACT

Limited research to date has qualitatively explored the perceptions members of the public who are not environmental activists hold of environmentalists. Therefore a qualitative survey was conducted with 89 US residents aged 21–53 (M_age?=?32.74, SD_age?=?7.89) to obtain an in-depth understanding of how non-activists within the public perceive environmentalists. Data obtained were analyzed using thematic analysis and demonstrated that non-activist perceptions of environmentalists contained both positive and negative components. Environmentalists were seen to value nature and to be actively involved in bringing about positive environmental change (positive component), yet were also viewed as aggressive in their behaviors and stubborn in their beliefs (negative component). Further still, it was found that environmentalists were more likely to be perceived positively when they engaged in individual-level, private sphere behaviors (such as recycling), and negatively when they engaged in collective-level, public sphere behaviors (such as protesting). These findings not only challenge the assumption that members of the public typically evaluate environmentalists negatively, they also outline why some individuals may fail to identify as an environmentalist and engage in pro-environmental behavior. Furthermore, they also provide some insight as to why some environmentalists find it difficult to advocate for system change that results from collective action within the public sphere.     

Effects of environmental illiteracy and environmental awareness among middle school students on environmental behavior

This study proposes and employs a structural model to examine the effects of environmental literacy, environmental awareness, environmental attitudes, and environmental behavior among middle school students in Eski?ehir on their purchase of environmentally friendly products. In the proposed structural model, environmental illiteracy and environmental awareness were the exogenous latent variables, while pro-environmental attitude, pro-environmental behavior, and the purchase of environmentally friendly products were the endogenous latent variables. The latent variable of environmental illiteracy did not have a statistically significant effect on environmental attitudes and purchase of environmentally friendly products, whereas environmental awareness had a positive effect on pro-environmental attitudes and the purchase of environmentally friendly products. These findings indicate that students with environmental awareness also develop positive attitudes toward the environment, and the presence of a positive attitude toward the environment leads them to display pro-environmental behaviors and adopt a positive attitude toward environmentally friendly products.     

美国反环境运动初探

美国反环境运动是企业和保守利益集团联合起来对环境运动的反动，目的是削弱公众对环境问题的关注，改变公众对环境问题的看法，推翻妨碍自由市场和企业利润的环境法规。自由主义智囊团、法人资源论者和明智利用运动是反环境运动的主力，它们盗用环境运动的修辞，展开各种策略进行反环境运动，虽然取得政治成功并赢得基层支持，但目的是维护自身的利益，并没有对环境问题提出解决方案，因而不能取代环境运动。     

Interpreting Images of Fracking: How Visual Frames and Standing Attitudes Shape Perceptions of Environmental Risk and Economic Benefit

The news media’s increased reliance on visual communication to illustrate complex processes and promote learning stresses the importance of investigating how visual content impacts the understanding of scientific issues. In this paper, we investigate how members of the public interpret and make sense of differentially framed images of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) depicting environmental risk, economic benefit, or issue protest. For the analysis, a repeated measures online experiment was conducted with 250 participants to evaluate 40 photographs of fracking operations and consequences. Quantitative coding and thematic analysis of open-ended responses to the images reveal that standing attitudes, operationalized as support, opposition, or indecision about fracking, segments viewers into distinct groups and shapes interpretations of environmental risk and economic benefit. Issue opponents are more likely to indicate concern for the environment regardless of frame shown, whereas undecideds and supporters cite the impact on human health more frequently, largely in relation to job site safety. Supporters also see the least ambiguity, and most economic gains, in images about the controversial production practice.     

Exploring relationships of environmental attitudes,behaviors, and sociodemographic indicators to aspects of discourses: analyses of International Social Survey Programme data in the Philippines

Data from the International Social Survey Programme 2000 and 2010 environment modules were analyzed to explore the relationships between attitudes, behavior, and sociodemographic variables to citizens’ preferences to aspects of environmental discourse in the Philippines. Overall, significantly more people agree to multilateralism, equity, and the link between the environment and economic progress in 2010 as compared to 2000. A series of multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to determine significant predictors to peoples’ disposition to variables related to three overarching environmental discourses. After controlling for other covariates, the study found that the more the Filipinos adhere to statements toward science and nature that are negatively connoted: the more likely they are to agree to international multilateral commitments and ascribe to equity for poorer countries in environmental efforts; and less likely to disagree to the aspects of multilateralism, equity, and the link between the environment and economic progress. Furthermore, the results showed that demographics and civic participations generally did not have a statistically significant impact on Filipino’s agreement or disagreement to environmental discourses. The paper then discusses the implications of the findings and conclusions of the study.     

Evaluating education for sustainable development (ESD): using Ecocentric and Anthropocentric Attitudes toward the Sustainable Development (EAATSD) scale

With the emergence of education for sustainable development (ESD), robust literature on ethics and ESD has emerged; however, ecocentric perspective developed within environmental ethics is marginalized in current ESDebate. The questions discussed in this article are as follows: Why is the distinction between anthropocentric and ecocentric view of environment salient to ESD? How can this distinction be operationalized and measured? Until now, little has been done to address complement quantitative studies of environmental attitudes by qualitative studies, exploring the sociocultural context in which ecocentric or anthropocentric attitudes are being formed. Neither of existing scales engaged with the interface between environmental ethics and sustainable development. This article will discuss ESD in the context of environmental ethics and present the results of the case study conducted with the Dutch Bachelor-level students. Results of qualitative evaluation of the scale measuring ecocentric and anthropocentric attitudes will be presented, and the new Ecocentric and Anthropocentric Attitudes toward the Sustainable Development (EAATSD) scale will be proposed.     

海岛居民环境友好行为及其影响因素研究--以长岛县为例

海岛是海洋生态系统的重要组成部分,保护海岛生态环境是推进海洋生态文明建设、保护海洋生态环境的重要方面。海岛居民是保护海岛生态环境的主体之一,研究海岛居民环境友好行为的影响因素,引导和鼓励海岛居民主动采取环境友好行为是改善海岛生态环境的有效途径。本研究在梳理国内外相关文献的基础上,对海岛居民环境友好行为的概念、类型及影响因素进行理论分析,建立包含生态管理行为、消费行为、说服行为、公民行为四个环境友好行为变量,环境态度、环境保护知识、环境经历、社会政策、行为约束五个影响因素变量在内的理论模型。结合海岛生态环境和海岛居民的特点,设计海岛居民版环境友好行为测量量表,并在长岛县进行问卷调查,运用描述性统计分析、结构方程模型分析探究海岛居民环境友好行为的影响因素及影响因素间的内在关系。研究发现:①海岛居民环境友好行为总体水平差异较大,难度较低的环境友好行为实施较好,而难度较高的实施较差;影响因素变量中,环境态度积极,环境经历丰富,环境保护知识掌握较好,相关社会政策较为不利,行为约束偏中性。②环境态度、环境经历、社会政策对海岛居民环境友好行为具有显著正向影响。③环境保护知识对环境态度具有显著正向影响,但对海岛居民环境友好行为无显著影响,存在“知易行难”现象。行为约束对海岛居民环境友好行为无显著影响。④环境经历不仅直接影响海岛居民环境友好行为,而且通过环境态度对海岛居民环境友好行为施加间接影响。基于研究结论,提出了改善海岛居民环境友好行为的对策建议。     

A Phenomenological Perspective on Ethical Duty in Environmental Communication

This article examines the framing of environmental risks and natural disasters in factual entertainment television programs of the early 2000s, a hybrid form combining techniques from documentary with techniques such as dramatic reconstructions and computer-generated imagery from entertainment genres. Using qualitative frame analysis, it examines a range of factual entertainment television programs' framing of environmental risk and natural disasters in terms of their attitudes, representation of human participants and visual composition. The article considers the similarities and differences in the framing of natural disasters as factual entertainment compared to the framing of natural disasters in news, documentary and fiction film. It argues that such programs offer representational frames both consonant with and distinct from other media and concludes that they problematically offer a predominantly fatalistic response to environmental risk, constructing natural disasters as voyeuristic spectacles for vicarious entertainment.     

Beasts,Burgers, and Hummers: Meat and the Crisis of Masculinity in Contemporary Television Advertisements

This paper examines three recent television advertisements that symbolically link meat not only with masculinity, but specifically with the “crisis in masculinity.” Using an ecofeminist lens, I engage in an intersectional analysis of these advertisements to demonstrate how they articulate the eating of meat with primitive masculinities as a response to perceived threats to hegemonic masculinity. These advertisements demonstrate that scholars interested in the status of masculinity must pay attention to the “threats” to masculinity posed by environmental and animal rights movements, and that scholars interested in environmental movements must pay attention to the role of masculinity in resisting moves toward sustainability. This analysis demonstrates the utility of ecofeminism in understanding the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and environmentalism while also pointing to the need for ecofeminism to continue to explore the implications of intersectionality for ecofeminist theory and criticism.     

Contemporary Environmental Art in China: Portraying Progress,Politics, and Ecosystems

Art has long been an important force in environmental movements. In China, environmental art is a fast-growing sector of the art scene. This new area of emphasis is expanding the function of art and aiding in China’s environmental movement by challenging both imported Western practices and Maoist era philosophy, thereby opening up new ways of considering the relationship between human “progress,” political systems, economic practices, and their repercussions on existing ecosystems. I turn to artist Xu Xiaoyan’s paintings to explore how the notion of “progress” can be challenged through art. I use Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to map how Xu’s art offers viewers space to think outside dominant paradigms, creates the potential for changes in human consciousness, considers the environment as a composition of relationships and interactions, and provokes discussion concerning the impact of linear notions of time on human conceptions of nature.     

环境保护视角下的食物里程研究

随着全球环境问题日趋严峻,可持续发展越来越重要,食品与环境如何相互影响,食品生产和消费过程中的碳减排问题,日益受到人们的广泛关注。"食物里程"通过考察食品从生产到餐桌的距离,量化食品生产、运输、消费过程的碳排放,考察食品对环境的影响,该指标得到政府、食品加工厂、贸易商、消费者、环保主义者和学者普遍关注。本文从食物里程的内涵着手,系统阐述食物里程概念的形成与发展,介绍食物里程的两种计算方法,包括投入产出-生命周期法和供应链中的能源使用等,食物里程涉及到碳排放的三个公认的评估标准:1PAS 2050,联合国气候变化框架公约清洁发展机制,ISO/CD 14067。在此基础上,本文从食物里程的价值角度、消费者角度及国际贸易角度对国内外相关研究进行系统的归纳与总结,提出未来的研究方向主要在于合理界定食物里程的内涵,科学利用食物里程改变生产和消费方式,从而改善环境,防止食物里程成为新的国际贸易壁垒。     

环境规制会影响产业集中度吗?:一个经验研究

作为刻画产业结构的重要指标之一——产业集中度,一直受到国内外学者的广泛重视,但鲜见有学者研究环境规制会对产业集中度带来何种影响。为了对此进行研究,本文以我国工业部门1996-2006年的数据为样本,首先计算出产业集中度(CR4和CR8)水平,并运用面板数据分析方法,在控制相关变量的基础上,研究了环境规制对产业集中度带来的影响,得到以下结论:(1)在不考虑其他控制变量时,环境规制变量对产业集中度产生不显著的正向促进作用,但随着控制变量的逐步引入,环境规制变量的显著性水平逐步提高,模型总体拟合效果趋于优化;(2)同时,进入退出壁垒、利润率水平、经济干预政策和规模经济程度四个控制变量也会对产业集中度产生显著的正向推动作用。因此,适度强化环境规制水平,不仅有利于保护环境,优化资源配置,淘汰落后产能,解决结构性产能过剩,而且有利于提升产业集中度,增强我国企业在国际上的竞争力。     

地方政府生态环境治理注意力研究——基于30个省市政府工作报告(2006—2015)文本分析

注意力代表着政府决策者对特定事务的关注,注意力的变化是政府决策选择变化的直接原因。环境治理注意力是环境治理进入议程设置,进而出台政策、实施治理的前提。政府工作报告是政府进行资源配置与精力投入的指挥棒,也是"政府将重视什么、哪些领域得到更多投入资源"的通知书和承诺书,它是政府注意力分配或者变化的重要载体。本文收集了30个省市地方政府自2006年到2015年共300份工作报告,通过文本分析方法,试图发现地方政府生态环境治理注意力的变化规律。分析结果呈现:1从时间轴上看,地方政府对于生态环境的注意力强度逐渐增加;2从地域轴上看,东、中、西部政府生态环境注意力差距并不明显,相比而言,中部处于一个稍低的位次;3从生态环境的范畴看,具体领域得到进一步扩展,中央与地方对环境具体事务保持了较高的一致性,注意力的变化与决策环境和中央宏观政策有重要相关关系。尽管在某些时间点,某些地域存在离散点,但总体而言,在中央政府强调经济发展需要与当地环境资源承载能力相协调的大背景下,地方政府将注意力大幅转向民生事务和生态环境。鉴于地方领导人任期以及注意力本身的"易变性",要保持地方政府环境治理注意力的强度和持续性,1增加制度供给,使环境治理成为法治常项;2将环境治理在公共事务治理的排序中前置,将环境治理放在突出位置;3提升环境事件的信息强度,向地方政府传导积极的环境治理压力。     

Where Technology Goes to Die: Representations of Electronic Waste in Global Television News

This article analyzes how electronic waste (e-waste) gets represented in television news stories. The main objective is to present a perspective on how a “low-frequency” emergency (i.e. a lengthy and ongoing state of environmental emergency) is presented as a newsworthy issue. Drawing on literature on televised “distant suffering,” the article engages in a multimodal text analysis of four news stories about e-waste. The findings show how on-location reports from e-waste dumping sites make use of sublime imagery in the visual representations; how e-waste dumping sites are presented as strange spaces, with no clear and comprehensible history; and finally, that the representations suggest an ambivalence and uncertainty when it comes to agency (who is responsible and what can be done?). The article ends with a discussion of the implications of this mode of representation and its effectiveness in eliciting an appropriate response to the harms caused by e-waste.     

我国公众环境保护意识的调查与分析

本文根据一次大规模的抽样调查资料，初步分析了我国公众环境保护意识的现状，认为从总体上看，公众的环保意识水平偏低；公众的环境资源况颇具特色；在经济发展与环境保护之间出现明显矛盾时，半数公众能够优先考虑环境保护；大多数公众认为环境保护与个人有关，但对个人的努力信心不足；超过七成的公众表示愿意为环境保护支付一定费用，但对高收入阶层普遍寄予较高的期望；公众有一定的依法保护环境的心理基础，但法律知识又非常缺乏。     

A Survey of Perception, Knowledge, Awareness, and attitude in Regard to Environmental Problems in a Sample of two Different Social Groups in Jakarta, Indonesia

A quantitative study was conducted in 1998 to investigate differences in perception, knowledge, awareness, and attitude with regard to environmental problems between educated and community groups and to identify human-dimension factors to improve public perception, knowledge, awareness, and attitude in relation to global environmental conservation concerns in developing countries. Educated and community groups in Jakarta were interviewed, and data obtained from a total of 537 males aged 30-49 years were analyzed. The data were evaluated by the chi-squared test and logistic regression was applied after factor analysis. The results show that: (1) The perception, knowledge, awareness, and attitude of educated subjects in regard to regional and global environmental problems were much better than those of subjects in the community group; (2) The highest 'yes' response in the community group was in regard to perception of AIDS (82.9%). Few subjects in the community group knew the effects and the cause or source of environmental problems, however, they were well informed about AIDS (86.4% for effects and 93.9% for cause or source). The conclusions are: (1) subjects in the educated group had better perception, more detailed knowledge, were more aware, and had better attitudes in regard to regional and global environmental problems than those in the community group; (2) more education is needed to develop environmental actions and ethics in developing countries; (3) non-formal environmental education through popular mass media should be used more widely and frequently, and more detailed information on the environment should be provided to literate people by newspapers and other means.