Environmental concern, attitude toward frugality, and ease of behavior as determinants of pro-environmental behavior intentions

This study investigates relations between environmental concern, attitude toward frugality, perceived ease of behavior, and stated intentions to engage in four different types of pro-environmental behavior, i.e., reductions in electricity and gas use, garbage, and automobile use, using data from 341 Japanese respondents. Environmental concern, attitude toward frugality and perceived ease of implementation were considered possible determinants. A structural equation analysis indicated that perceived ease of implementation had effects for all of the pro-environmental behaviors. It also indicated that environmental concern had a positive effect solely for garbage reduction, while attitude toward frugality had positive effects for gas and electricity reduction. For automobile use reduction, neither environmental concern nor attitude toward frugality had significant effects. The relationship between attitude toward frugality and mottainai, that is a Japanese concept indicating respect for resources, is then discussed, and it is suggested that educating people to have not only a high level of environmental concern but also a positive attitude toward frugality would be an effective means of promoting pro-environmental behavior.     

Social, cultural and structural influences on household waste recycling: A case study

The household-recycling rate in the Borough of Burnley, England in 2001/2002 was only half the national average of 12%. This research employed both quantitative and qualitative surveys in order to ascertain whether householders’ attitudes to recycling were contributory factors to the generally poor recycling performance and to investigate other social, cultural and structural influences. The Borough has a large Asian–British population concentrated in two deprived wards where recycling rates are particularly low, so special attention was given to ascertaining their attitudes towards recycling.The quantitative survey comprised a postal questionnaire sent to a random sample of 360 households drawn from the electoral register. The qualitative survey consisted of group interviews with the Asian–British population at local community centres and focus groups attended by volunteers from the quantitative study.The findings suggest that householders are very willing to participate in recycling, as shown by the almost 80% claiming to recycle paper, but that local recycling services are too unreliable and inconvenient to allow them to do so comprehensively. Asian–British attitudes to recycling were found to be no different to those of the wider population, with their low participation being linked to the higher priorities imposed upon them by economic deprivation. The findings are broadly in line with those of the literature in that recycling participation tends to be higher among more affluent and older people, but lower among less affluent and younger households, probably due in part to the availability of both storage space and time, with the implication that the Borough's preponderance of terraced housing militates against a high recycling rate. Policy recommendations to local authorities include the provision of bespoke recycling services to suit the variety of residential conditions across the UK, and the provision of regular feedback to householders regarding recycling services and performance.Further research is needed to identify non-recyclers and to explore how householders’ underlying psychological, cultural and social attitudes to recycling impinge upon recycling and participation rates.     

Determining Visitors’ Dispositions Toward the Designation of a Greek National Park

This article presents the findings of the first major visitor survey conducted at the Central Rhodope Mountain Complex, situated in northern Greece. The study area is one of a number of sites planned to become National Parks under a recent initiative of the Greek government. We used a logistic regression method to define significant predictors of visitors’ awareness and attitude toward park designation, as well as their willingness to pay a conditional entrance fee. Study findings demonstrated that the probability of being aware of the park designation initiative is higher for visitors who obtained information from travel agencies or media to make their destination choice, compared to visitors who resorted to word-of-mouth recommendations. Knowledge and attitudes toward animals living in the study area revealed a limited influence on visitors’ dispositions toward park designation. The results of this study call for action to implement education programs for National Park users. These programs should aim at rendering the environmental characteristics of the Central Rhodope Mountain Complex to be significant predictors of visitors’ dispositions toward the study area. This would favor its uniqueness as a destination, as well as contribute to its long-term economic sustainability.     

Bird's‐eye view of the environmental attitude types in the sustainable consumption context

Environmental attitudes are considered to be important factors that influence sustainable consumption. Typically, attitudes fall into two main types: a general environmental attitude (GEA) and a specific environmental attitude (SEA). This study found that the effect of the SEA is stronger than the GEA in regard to sustainable consumption behavior. Also, when analyzing the purchasing behavior of green products, the SEA is a more appropriate and consistent predictor of behavior than the GEA. The study suggests a more operationalized and salient definition of the intended meaning of the term “environmental attitude,” and also advises researchers and marketing professionals to use a framework that contains both types of environmental attitudes in order to better understand what drives the attitude–behavior gap in green consumer behavior.     

Satisfying shoppers’ psychological needs: From public market to cyber-mall

In many cities in North America and Europe, shopping centres are replacing the traditional high street shops. At the same time, electronic shopping is growing rapidly. In this paper, the results of a literature review of environment–behaviour research on shopping and shopping environments (e.g., farmer's markets, shopping centres, and electronic shopping) are presented. The focus of analysis is on how the physical features (e.g., layout and background music) influence shoppers’ experiences, and on how well these environments satisfy the psychological needs of their shoppers (e.g., social interaction, sensory stimulation, and security and comfort). Any implications for environmental design, and the future of shopping environments are discussed. A conceptual framework and suggestions for future research are proposed.     

Lessons from an Evaluation of a Boater Outreach Program for Manatee Protection

Watercraft collisions account for 25–30% of manatee deaths annually in Florida. Education and outreach interventions for boaters are strategies for reducing manatee mortality. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Manatee Watch program by surveying primary boat users whose boats were approached by Manatee Watch. We compared the attitudes, knowledge, and behavioral intentions of boaters who received Manatee Watch materials with a control group of boaters observed by the Florida Marine Research Institute in Tampa Bay during 1999–2001. Results of the 51-item telephone survey with 499 boaters indicated that the Manatee Watch intervention had little effect on boater’s attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors regarding manatees. However, individual attitude scores were positively correlated with safe boating behaviors in shallow waters including maintaining a slower speed and watching out for manatees. Overall knowledge about manatees was correlated with one manatee-safe boating behavior. To improve efficacy, educators should (a) incorporate evaluation into the planning stages of program development; (b) target messages to influence boaters’ attitudes toward manatees and ecosystem health, and their feelings of ownership and empowerment; (c) facilitate active participation of the boaters; and (d) increase the duration and variety of intervention.     

番禺市民环境意识调查与评价研究

为了了解番禺市民环境意识的现状,把握市民环境意识的总体水平,探讨今后环境保护宣传教育的重点和方向,对番禺市21个镇区的市民的环境意识进行了抽样设想。从环境态度,环境行为,环境知识3个方面对市民的环境意识水平进行了评价,并对影响环境影响水平的个人因素进行了分析和综合评价。结果表明：现阶段番禺市民环境意识勉强进入中 等水平,而市民的环境态度已进入较高水平,环境知识为中等水平,环境行为为中等水平,市民的环境态度,环境行为,环境知识水平相互脱节,表现为意识先行,行为滞后。     

Knowledge,attitude and behavior of farmers in farmland conservation in China: an application of the structural equation model

We analyzed the relationship between the conservation behavior of farmers and their environmental attitude and knowledge, whilst controlling for exogenous socio-economic factors. We employed the structural equation model with cross-sectional data from 442 farmers from the Guanzhong Plain of China. Results showed that local farmers generally possessed a positive environmental attitude and undertook considerable conservation action. Conservation behavior was directly affected by environmental attitude and indirectly by environmental knowledge (via attitude). Social networks, farm size, land rights, age and incentives were significant exogenous explanatory variables. Thus, understanding the importance of socio-behavioral characteristics, including the environmental attitude and knowledge of farmers, is important for the development of farmland conservation policies. Specifically, farmers in this area were found to significantly depend on each other for information on farmland conservation practices. Thus, role model farmer discussions, dissemination of environmentally friendly techniques via social networks and the rewarding of environmentally friendly behavior among farmers should be used to encourage ongoing restoration endeavors, and thereby help mitigate environmental degradation.     

The acceptability, personal outcome expectations, and expected effects of transport pricing policies

Acceptability and personal outcome expectations (i.e., the extent to which one expects to be better or worse off) of transport pricing policies were examined in relation to the expected effects of these policies on one’s own car use, congestion and environmental problems. Car users who commuted frequently by car and experienced congestion on a regular basis evaluated two pricing measures, which were mainly aimed at either decreasing congestion (by tolling at congested areas) or environmental problems (by a differential kilometre charge based on car mass). For the policy mainly aimed to reduce congestion, acceptability was higher and personal outcome expectations were more positive when respondents expected reductions in congestion when the policy was implemented. The policy aimed to reduce environmental problems was more acceptable and respondents expected to be better off in general when they expected reductions in environmental problems after its implementation. Expectations, both about a decrease in congestion and environmental problems were related to respondents’ personal outcome expectations of the policy mainly aimed to decrease environmental problems. We conclude that the acceptability of transport pricing policies are not necessarily low because car users expect negative effects on their car use, but rather because they are not be convinced that transport pricing policies will reduce congestion and environmental problems.     

Public Lakes, Private Lakeshore: Modeling Protection of Native Aquatic Plants

Protection of native aquatic plants is an important proenvironmental behavior, because plant loss coupled with nutrient loading can produce changes in lake ecosystems. Removal of aquatic plants by lakeshore property owners is a diffuse behavior that may lead to cumulative impacts on lake ecosystems. This class of behavior is challenging to manage because collective impacts are not obvious to the actors. This paper distinguishes positive and negative beliefs about aquatic plants, in models derived from norm activation theory (Schwartz, Adv Exp Soc Psychol 10:221–279, 1977) and the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: an introduction to theory and research, Addison-Wesley, Boston 1975), to examine protection of native aquatic plants by Minnesota lakeshore property owners. We clarify how positive and negative evaluations of native aquatic plants affect protection or removal of these plants. Results are based on a mail survey (n = 3,115). Results suggest that positive evaluations of aquatic plants (i.e., as valuable to lake ecology) may not connect with the global attitudes and behavioral intentions that direct plant protection or removal. Lakeshore property owners’ behavior related to aquatic plants may be driven more by tangible personal benefits derived from accessible, carefully managed lakeshore than intentional action taken to sustain lake ecosystems. The limited connection of positive evaluations of aquatic plants to global attitudes and behavioral intentions may reflect either lack of knowledge of what actions are needed to protect lake health and/or unwillingness to lose perceived benefits derived from lakeshore property.     

A social topography of home and horizon: The misfit, the dutiful, and longing for home

The environmental perception wave at Clark University was already in full swing when Anne Buttimer arrived in Fall 1970 with curiosities about social space, ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, ‘home’ and ‘reach’, from a project on residential area design in Glasgow, Scotland. Lessons learned from the intense interaction between geographers and psychologists were enormously valuable for subsequent work with geography students at Clark during the 1970s. Since then she has worked on temporality and environmental experience, migration and identity, with colleagues in Sweden, and has pursued autobiographically-based approaches to questions of creativity and context and the history of geographic thought and practice. In retrospect, she claims, one of the most valuable results of the perception wave was to provoke awareness of the lenses through which reality is experienced by people in different cultures, and that includes the disciplinary cultures into which researchers themselves are socialized.     

From Experiential Knowledge to Public Participation: Social Learning at the Community Fisheries Action Roundtable

Extensive research demonstrates that public participation in environmental decision making can increase understanding of diverse worldviews and knowledge bases, public faith in governance institutions, and compliance with resulting rules. Concerns linger around costs, possibilities of polarization and decreased legitimacy in cases of poorly executed processes, and the ability of newly empowered groups to gain political leverage over others. If participants in public processes can bracket their personal experience to better assess other viewpoints, establishing mutual respect and understanding through deliberative exchange, they increase the likelihood of maximizing participatory benefits and minimizing risks. Such reflexivity indicates double-loop social learning, change undertaken through collective discussion and interaction. A capacity-building workshop program aims to foster such learning within the Maine fishing industry. Case material draws primarily on participant observation and interview data, using a grounded theory approach to qualitative analysis. Evidence indicates that in social contexts removed from the norms of daily life and the frustrations of past fishery management confrontations, harvesters acquire knowledge and skills that facilitate more strategic and productive behavior in formal and informal marine resource decision venues. Suspensions of longstanding spatio-temporal assumptions around the prosecution and management of fisheries comprise key learning moments, and yield corresponding changes in industry attitudes and actions. With heightened appreciation for a diversity of experiences and management priorities, harvesters can better mobilize a broad spectrum of local knowledge to develop viable regulatory proposals and collaborative decision processes.     

汶川灾区居民环境意识现状与提升对策研究——以龙门山镇为例

以彭州市龙门山镇为例,实地调查、问卷调查与访谈相结合,从知识、态度和行为三个角度对灾后公众环境意识状况进行研究。当地居民环境知识水平普遍较低;对环境问题关注度较高,环境态度较好;环境行为差异较大。职业、性别、年龄和文化程度对环境意识影响主要体现在环境知识方面而对环保态度和环保行为影响不大。旅游业受地震破坏严重,灾后物资紧缺,环境教育应结合实际,针对学生、村民、公务员等不同人群分别采取对应措施。     

Pattern of representation of countries in cognitive maps of the world with special reference to Africa

Although for a long time environmental psychologists have been concerned with the nature and process of environmental perception and its representation in map forms, global sketch maps have not been popular in mainstream research. Further, conceptual and theoretical insights into the subject are yet to be fully achieved; and quite significantly, comparative analysis has been limited by the concentration of research efforts in the developed countries of Europe and America. In the same vein, the challenge of clarifying the psychological, spatial and social underpinnings of cognitive maps and their contributory role in day-to-day space-related problem solving and decision-making brings to the fore the need for cross-disciplinary and across-regional studies. This paper examines the world's image from an African perspective, exploring those countries of the world that are best known to Africans and the factors responsible for the pattern of recall and representation in the maps drawn by them. Some 656 maps were collected from 13 sites in 11 countries. Analysis of the frequency of inclusion of countries was first carried out; chi-square analysis was then performed on the frequency of inclusion by level of a country's economic development, population, geographical size and relative location from Nigeria and Africa. The results from qualitative interpretation show that while images of countries may have been influenced by composite and multifaceted factors, embracing historical and cultural associations, media images and invocations, Africans, nevertheless, tended to recall nations following some descending hierarchy, with ‘developed/geographically prominent countries’, ‘we’ (i.e. Africa), ‘others’ and ‘unknown’ countries as discernible clusters. From statistical test, population and spatial size of countries, the proximity of countries to the assessors and to some extent, level of economic development, were found to be significant in accounting for the pattern of recall and representation in cognitive maps. The paper shows that in spite of the evident limitations of mental sketches they hold some promise for our understanding of cross-regional variations in the images of the world, which could be important to the building of relevant social and geographical education to foster global understanding.     

Youth environmental attitudes in Australia and Brunei: implications for education

This paper explores similarities and differences in the knowledge, beliefs and actions that comprise the environmental attitudes of senior secondary school students in Australia and Brunei. Utilising data from a wider international study in Asia and the Pacific (Yencken et al. , 2000), the paper uses findings from these two countries to illustrate the pervasiveness of global environmental concerns over local cultural influences in the construction of youth environmental attitudes in Australia and Brunei. Thus, young people in these countries, as they do in all parts of the Asia-Pacific region, have very similar levels of environmental awareness and knowledge, sources of environmental, beliefs, systems or world views about the environment, and levels of perceived control over environmental trends. They also have a shared desire for schools to do more in the area of environmental education. The paper concludes that much more effort needs to be made in certain areas. The first is to encourage teachers and others who have influence over young people to develop their own knowledge and skills to be able to teach environmental education effectively. The second is in the area of curriculum and pedagogical reform so that young people explore the many possible ways in which current systems can change to support sustainability, in which current lifestyles reflect these systems, and in which their own actions can contribute to a sustainable future.     

The effect of tailored information, goal setting, and tailored feedback on household energy use, energy-related behaviors, and behavioral antecedents

In this multidisciplinary study, an Internet-based tool was used to encourage households (N=189) to reduce their direct (gas, electricity and fuel) and indirect energy use (embedded in the production, transportation and disposal of consumer goods). A combination of tailored information, goal setting (5%), and tailored feedback was used. The purpose of this study was to examine whether this combination of interventions would result in (i) changes in direct and indirect energy use, (ii) changes in energy-related behaviors, and (iii) changes in behavioral antecedents (i.e. knowledge). After 5 months, households exposed to the combination of interventions saved 5.1%, while households in the control group used 0.7% more energy. Households exposed to the interventions saved significantly more direct energy than households in the control group did. No difference in indirect energy savings emerged. Households exposed to the interventions adopted a number of energy-saving behaviors during the course of the study, whereas households in the control group did so to a lesser extent. Households exposed to the interventions had significantly higher knowledge levels of energy conservation than the control group had. It is argued that if the aim is to effectively encourage household energy conservation, it is necessary to examine changes in energy use, energy-related behaviors and behavioral antecedents.     

Neighborhood attachment and its correlates: Exploring neighborhood conditions, collective efficacy, and gardening

Neighborhood attachment relates to one’s emotional connection to physical and social environments. Such bonds are critical for shaping how people interact with their local environments, connect with others and may be vital for fostering sustainable health behavior change related to nutrition and physical activity. Using data from a population-based survey of neighborhood environments and health in Denver, Colorado (n = 410 respondents; n = 45 block-groups) and hierarchical linear modeling techniques, we examined the relationship between objective and perceived neighborhood conditions (e.g., crime, physical incivilities, sense of safety), social processes (e.g., collective efficacy) and recreational gardening and neighborhood attachment. Results indicate length of residency, collective efficacy, and home and community garden participation are associated with neighborhood attachment. Further research is warranted to consider neighborhood attachment as an intervening mechanism through which gardens and other outdoor everyday places may influence health behavior change.     

Learning for sustainability: participatory resource management in Cambodian fishing villages

Considerable attention is now being given to the role and importance of education and learning implications of participatory resource and environmental governance. The contention is that such learning has the potential to transform behaviour, and in the case of resource management, may help change current patterns in resource use towards a more sustainable social-ecological system. Our purpose is to establish the opportunities for learning afforded to those participating in local level resource management committees in two Cambodian fishing communities and consider the learning outcomes from such opportunities. Our approach was qualitative and used a case study design. The findings establish a wide range of committee resource management activities that resulted in both instrumental (e.g., learning about administrative procedures) and communicative (e.g., insights into the need to conserve mangroves) learning. It was revealed that such learning can lead to changes in behaviour at the community level (e.g., managing local waste). Our findings also indicated a number of motivators and enablers of learning such as opportunities for dialogue, leadership and the presence of declining resources.     

Factors influencing private and public environmental protection behaviors: results from a survey of residents in Shaanxi, China

Currently one of the largest and most rapidly developing countries, China also has some of the world's most severe environmental problems. China will most likely need to use all of the potential major strategies currently available to solve the country's huge environmental challenges, including promoting individual conservation behavior through educational campaigns and encouraging public environmental advocacy. This paper summarized the findings of a survey of 347 residents of Shaanxi province on environmental attitudes and behaviors. The survey found generally high levels of environmental knowledge and high recognition of the seriousness of environmental issues, moderate levels of individual actions supporting environmental resource conservation and low levels of public environmental behaviors, particularly for organized public advocacy. Further analysis indicated that the perceived importance of environmental protection is the most important factor influencing individual environmental resource conservation, but not public advocacy behaviors. Implications for environmental campaigns are discussed.