Collective guilt mediates the effect of beliefs about global warming on willingness to engage in mitigation behavior

The present research examines whether collective guilt for an ingroup's collective greenhouse gas emissions mediates the effects of beliefs about the causes and effects of global warming on willingness to engage in mitigation behavior. In Study 1, we manipulate the causes and effects of global warming and then measure collective guilt. Results demonstrate that collective guilt for Americans' greenhouse gas emissions is stronger when participants believe that global warming is caused by humans and will have minor effects. Study 2 employs the same manipulations and then measures collective guilt and collective anxiety, as well as willingness to conserve energy and pay green taxes. This study replicates the effect from Study 1 and rules out collective anxiety as a plausible alternative mediator. Collective guilt for Americans' greenhouse emissions was the only reliable mediator of the effect of beliefs about global warming on willingness to engage in mitigation behaviors. The importance of collective guilt as a tool for promoting global warming mitigation is discussed.     

Public support for ecosystem restoration in the Hudson River Valley,USA

We applied the Theory of Planned Behavior to help understand the relationships between environmental beliefs, support for ecosystem restoration actions, and willingness to pay (WTP) for restoration and protection goals in the Hudson River estuary, New York State, USA. We conducted a mail survey with 3,000 randomly-chosen local residents of the Hudson River estuary in the fall of 1999. As hypothesized, the broad ecosystem restoration goals of the Hudson River Estuary Action Plan were more strongly supported than the corresponding specific implementation actions. We found that beliefs and past behavior were better explanatory variables than sociodemographic characteristics for explaining people's support for ecosystem restoration actions and WTP for restoration and protection goals. Because ecosystem restoration goals appear to be more generally acceptable than specific restoration actions, proponents of restoration programs should not become complacent about the need for active public outreach and involvement even if initial restoration program discussions have been low in controversy. Efforts to assess and foster support for ecosystem restoration should be targeted toward audiences identified on the basis of beliefs and past behaviors rather than on sociodemographic characteristics.     

Risk and cooperation: managing hazardous fuel in mixed ownership landscapes

Managing natural processes at the landscape scale to promote forest health is important, especially in the case of wildfire, where the ability of a landowner to protect his or her individual parcel is constrained by conditions on neighboring ownerships. However, management at a landscape scale is also challenging because it requires cooperation on plans and actions that cross ownership boundaries. Cooperation depends on people's beliefs and norms about reciprocity and perceptions of the risks and benefits of interacting with others. Using logistic regression tests on mail survey data and qualitative analysis of interviews with landowners, we examined the relationship between perceived wildfire risk and cooperation in the management of hazardous fuel by nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners in fire-prone landscapes of eastern Oregon. We found that NIPF owners who perceived a risk of wildfire to their properties, and perceived that conditions on nearby public forestlands contributed to this risk, were more likely to have cooperated with public agencies in the past to reduce fire risk than owners who did not perceive a risk of wildfire to their properties. Wildfire risk perception was not associated with past cooperation among NIPF owners. The greater social barriers to private-private cooperation than to private-public cooperation, and perceptions of more hazardous conditions on public compared with private forestlands may explain this difference. Owners expressed a strong willingness to cooperate with others in future cross-boundary efforts to reduce fire risk, however. We explore barriers to cooperative forest management across ownerships, and identify models of cooperation that hold potential for future collective action to reduce wildfire risk.     

Differentiation of determinants of low-cost and high-cost recycling

The bulk of research on recycling has been devoted to disentangling factors that affect it. Based on the low-cost hypothesis, we suggest that psychological factors differentially influence behaviors that are relatively less costly to perform compared to behaviors that are more costly to perform. Recycling has often been viewed as low-cost behavior, neglecting that recycling in different waste categories may vary in cost. The aim of the present study was to apply and extend the low-cost hypothesis by investigating whether beliefs about environmental consequences, knowledge, and norms differentially affect low-cost and high-cost recycling. A survey of 418 participants showed that knowledge, social norms, and personal norms were related to both low-cost and high-cost recycling, but the relation was significantly stronger for high-cost recycling. Personal norms partially mediated procedural knowledge and social norms in both low-cost and high-cost recycling. The findings emphasize the need to regard recycling as a multiform behavior and to analyse its determinants separately for different waste categories.     

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.     

Context change and travel mode choice: Combining the habit discontinuity and self-activation hypotheses

The habit discontinuity hypothesis states that when a context change disrupts individuals’ habits, a window opens in which behavior is more likely to be deliberately considered. The self-activation hypothesis states that when values incorporated in the self-concept are activated, these are more likely to guide behavior. Combining these two hypotheses, it was predicted that context change enhances the likelihood that important values are considered and guide behavior. This prediction was tested in the domain of travel mode choices among university employees who had recently moved versus had not recently moved residence. As was anticipated, participants who had recently moved and were environmentally concerned used the car less frequently for commuting to work. This was found not only when compared to those who were low on environmental concern (which would be a trivial finding), but also to those who were environmentally concerned but had not recently moved. The effects were controlled for a range of background variables. The results support the notion that context change can activate important values that guide the process of negotiating sustainable behaviors.     

Explaining landholders' decisions about riparian zone management: the role of behavioural, normative, and control beliefs

Water quality is a key concern in the current global environment, with the need to promote practices that help to protect water quality, such as riparian zone management, being paramount. The present study used the theory of planned behaviour as a framework for understanding how beliefs influence decisions about riparian zone management. Respondents completed a survey that assessed their behavioural, normative, and control beliefs in relation to intentions to manage riparian zones on their property. The results of the study showed that, overall, landholders with strong intentions to manage their riparian zones differed significantly in terms of their beliefs compared to landholders who had weak intentions to manage their riparian zones. Strong intentions to manage riparian zones were associated with a favourable cost-benefit analysis, greater perceptions of normative support for the practice and lower perceptions of the extent to which barriers would impede management of riparian zones. It was also evident that willingness to comply with the recommendations of salient referents, beliefs about the benefits of riparian zone management and perceptions of the extent to which barriers would impede riparian zone management were most important for determining intentions to manage riparian zones. Implications for policy and extension practice are discussed.     

Communicating climate science: The role of perceived communicator’s motives

In two experimental studies, we investigated the effects of public perceptions of climate scientists’ communicative motives on trust in scientists and willingness to engage with climate science messages. Study 1 demonstrated that members of the public who were led to believe that scientists aim to inform about the consequences of climate change (rather than to persuade to take a particular course of action) reported higher trust in scientists and stronger willingness to engage in environmental behaviour. Study 2 revealed that this effect was moderated by the style of the scientific message that participants were exposed to. Participants who expected scientists to engage in persuasion were more receptive to persuasive rather than informative messages, while the opposite was true for participants who believed that scientists’ purpose was purely to inform. In both studies the effects of perceived motives on willingness to act in line with the climate change messages were mediated through trust in scientists. The data demonstrate that managing public expectations about the purposes of science communication and delivering messages that are consistent with these expectations are a key to successful communication of climate science.     

诱导承诺在亲环境行为中的作用机制研究

本文通过两个现场实验分别考察了解释水平、效能信念两类因素是如何在诱导承诺中发挥作用的。实验一考察了时间、社会、空间这三个解释水平维度如何影响诱导承诺的,实验二考察了个体效能、集体效能这两个效能信念是如何影响承诺行为实施的。最终,我们得出这样的结论：①不管高解释水平还是低解释水平,在呈现明显空间距离、社会距离的操控材料时,被试是否做出亲环境行为承诺存在显著差异。②无论时间距离、空间距离还是社会距离,高水平解释倾向都更容易提高亲环境行为承诺。除此之外,我们还验证了公开承诺比私下承诺更适合中国文化背景下的亲环境行为激励。     

Residential mobility and personal well-being

This research examines the relationship between personal mobility rate (number of lifetime moves/respondent's age) and health status. A contextual analysis is proposed in which the health consequences of relocation depend not only on the immediate circumstances surrounding a move, but also on the broader context of the individual's residential history, current life situation, and aspirations for the future. Two hundred and forty-two adult employees completed an initial survey of lifetime residential history, current residential desirability, employment experience, and perceived housing options for the future. Three months later, a panel group of 121 respondents completed a follow-up survey of emotional and physical well-being. Frequent relocation was directly associated with a greater number of illness-related symptoms, but the impact of mobility rate was largely mediated by psychological factors. Health problems were more prevalent among high-mobility individuals characterized by low rather than high levels of environmental exploratory tendency; among low-mobility persons reporting low versus high levels of residential choice and congruence; and among low residential-quality individuals who perceived future residential options to be unavailable rather than available.     

Time preference,the environment and the interests of future generations

The behavior of individuals currently living will generally have long-term consequences that affect the well-being of those who will come to live in the future. Intergenerational interdependencies of this nature raise difficult moral issues because only the current generation is in a position to decide on actions that will determine the nature of the world in which future generations will live. Although most are willing to attach some weight to the interests of future generations, many would argue that it is not necessary to treat these interests as equivalent to those of the current generation. A common approach in this context is to use a system of discounting to evaluate future benefits and harms. This paper assesses the logic of discounting drawing on the writings of economists and philosophers. Much of the economic literature concerns the choice of an appropriate social discount rate. The social discount rate can be taken to reflect beliefs about the rights of future generations, a subject that has been extensively debated in the phioosophic literature. The writings of both economists and philosophers concerned with the weight to attach to the interests of future generations are reviewed and evaluated in this paper and the implications for environmental policy are discussed.     

What’s Wrong with the Tap? Examining Perceptions of Tap Water and Bottled Water at Purdue University

The environmental impacts of bottled water prompted us to explore drinking water choices at Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, IN. A random sample of 2,045 Purdue University students, staff, and faculty was invited to participate in an online survey. The survey assessed current behaviors as well as perceived barriers and benefits to drinking tap water versus bottled water. 677 surveys were completed for a response rate of 33.1%. We then conducted qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of university undergraduates (n = 21) to obtain contextual insights into the survey results and the beliefs of individuals with a variety of drinking water preferences. This study revealed that women drink disproportionately more bottled water then men while undergraduate students drink more than graduate students, staff and faculty. The study also uncovered a widespread belief that recycling eliminates the environmental impacts of bottled water. Important barriers to drinking tap water at Purdue include: perceived risks from tap water and the perceived safety of bottled water, preferring the taste of bottled water, and the convenience of drinking bottled water. The qualitative interviews revealed that drinking water choices can be influenced by several factors—especially whether individuals trust tap water to be clean—but involve varying levels of complexity. The implications of these results for social marketing strategies to promote tap water are discussed.     

Application of a Modified Health Belief Model to the Pro‐Environmental Behavior of Private Well Water Testing

A social cognition model of health behavior, the health belief model, was applied to the pro‐environmental behavior of private well water testing. Conceptualizing environmental behaviors as health behaviors may provide new insight into pro‐environmental behavior change. A groundwater education program was provided to K‐12 children throughout New England. Both child participants and their parents completed surveys pertaining to private well water behavior. Results indicate that perceived barriers and socioeconomic status significantly influenced past well water testing of parent participants. Perceived barriers included: participants' concern related to the cost of treating their water, and how a well water problem would influence their property value. Parent participants also indicated that they would perform future well water testing if they received a reminder cue to action that might include: getting a discount or reminder in the mail, if a well testing program was available, and state or local requirement. Our findings reinforce the need for continued private well water research and parallels to additional environmental behaviors.     

Acidification and recreational fisheries in Finland: A mail survey of potential impacts

In Finland, small forest lakes and rivers in the northern part of the country are more sensitive to acidic deposition than other Finnish waters. In some lakes, acid-sensitive fish populations have declined. A nationwide survey of fishers showed that, at present, the number of fishers whose primary fishing waters are affected by airborne acidification is negligible compared to the estimated total number of adult fishers (1.1 million). The proportion of the fishers who mainly fish in water types sensitive to airborne acidification is considerable, 3% for the rivers in northern Finland and 21% for small forest lakes. There is general concern among fishers about the effects of acidification. Changes in the fishing waters are attributed to acidification by 5–10% of the fishers, although in most cases other information about the fishing waters rules out acidification as an explanation for the changes. Among those who fish in sensitive types of waters, a willingness to mitigate potential damages was reported by approximately one third of all fishers. Clear differences in the willingness to rehabilitate the fishery were observed in relation to the importance of fishing as a spare time activity and the distance between the fishing waters and a home or summer cottage.     

Addressing climate change: Determinants of consumers' willingness to act and to support policy measures

Consumers influence climate change through their consumption patterns and their support or dismissal of climate mitigation policy measures. Both climate-friendly actions and policy support comprise a broad range of options, which vary in manifold ways and, therefore, might be influenced by different factors. The aims of the study were, therefore, two-fold: first, we intended to find a meaningful way to classify different ways of addressing climate change. Second, we aimed to examine which determinants influence people's willingness to engage in these behaviors. We conducted a large-scale mail survey in Switzerland in which respondents rated, among other items, their willingness to act or support a range of possible actions and mitigations measures. A principal component analysis indicated that a distinction in terms of a behavior's directness as well as a differentiation according to perceived costs seem to be appropriate to classify climate-friendly actions. Multiple regression analyses showed that perceived costs and perceived climate benefit turned out to be the strongest predictors for willingness to act or to support climate policy measures. The strong influence of perceived climate benefit might reflect a strategy of reducing cognitive dissonance. As high-cost behaviors are more difficult to adopt, consumers may reduce dissonance by dismissing high-cost behaviors as not effective in terms of climate mitigation. Political affiliation proved to be another strong determinant of willingness to act or support. Participants on the right wing were less willing to show indirect climate-friendly behaviors, change their mobility behaviors, and to support any type of climate mitigation policy measures. Climate-friendly low-cost behaviors, however, were not influenced by political affiliation.     

The costs of congestion and wilderness recreation

Existing research on the effects of congestion in wilderness areas suffers from problems associated with asking people directly what they would be willing to pay to avoid congestion under hypothetical circumstances. The work reported here is based on methodologies that infer conclusions from observed behavior. Two inferential methodologies are used to examine visitors' willingness to pay at three California wilderness areas during peak and off-peak use periods. Inferential methodologies do not provide unambiguous measures of consumer surplus. However, they do yield the conclusion that, with the exception of a relatively few individuals, solitude is not of overriding importance. Convenience of timing and the attributes of different wilderness areas appear to be more important than congestion.     

A COST‐BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF WATER QUALITY PROTECTION IN THE CATAWBA BASIN1

ABSTRACT: The primary objective of this study was to perform a cost‐benefit analysis of maintaining the current level of water quality in the Catawba River basin. Economic benefits were estimated using a stated preference survey method designed to value respondents' willingness to pay for a management plan to protect water quality in the Catawba basin over time. From the surveys conducted with 1,085 area residents, we calculated an annual mean willingness to pay of $139 for the management plan, or more than $75.4 million for all taxpayers in the area. Over the five‐year time horizon in which respondents were asked to pay for the management plan, this resulted in a total economic benefit of $340.1 million. The Watershed Analysis Risk Management Framework model was used to estimate the amount of management activities needed to protect the current level of water quality in the basin over time. Based on the model results, the total cost of the management plan was calculated to be $244.8 million over a ten‐year period. The resulting cost‐benefit analysis indicated that the potential benefits of this management plan would outweigh the costs by more than $95 million.     

Participants and non-participants of place-based groups: an assessment of attitudes and implications for public participation in water resource management

Policy-makers and public participation analysts face the question of who should be involved in environmental decision-making. Participants are often representatives of organized groups who share similar demographic and other characteristics. This raises concerns about the degree to which the interests and opinions of others are represented. The research presented here investigates the nature and degree of differences in environmental attitudes, specifically those toward water resource management efforts, among people who do and do not participate in place-based groups in metropolitan Portland, Oregon. Neighborhood associations and a watershed council were the focus of this research due to their involvement in land-use planning and resource activities. Thirty-four individual attitudinal judgments were evaluated, along with four indices representing attitudes toward resource protection goals, government, regulations, and economic measures. Survey findings revealed watershed council participants were more supportive of resource protection compared to others on all attitudinal dimensions except anthropocentric goals. In contrast, neighborhood association participants are relatively representative of non-participants except for heightened support for economic strategies. Participants in both groups exhibited higher socioeconomic status than non-participants. Written survey comments highlighted the perceived value of on-the-ground projects incorporating local input and feedback while interviews provided insights on how to expand participation in place-based groups and resource protection efforts.     

Effects of Information on the Social Acceptability of Alternatives to Clearfelling in Australian Wet Eucalypt Forests

The effects of viewing different types of information were investigated in people judging the social acceptability of alternative forest harvest systems. Approximately 500 Tasmanians were shown still-simulated images of four harvest systems (a clearfell system, two aggregated retention systems, and a selective system) and were asked to judge their acceptability. Individual interviews were conducted with 12 of the participants. It was anticipated that people holding different beliefs about the consequences of harvesting would have different responses to information. Cluster analysis was used to group participants according to these beliefs. Responses to still images were compared with responses to two other types of information: information about consequences of the harvest systems in the form of indicator symbols, and information about regeneration over time, presented as visual animations. The effects of information differed across both harvest system and belief cluster groups of participants. The largest effects of information occurred in people who held a mix of beliefs about consequences. Within this group, participants who viewed the indicators rated a 30% aggregated retention system higher and selective harvesting lower, than those who did not view the indicators. Viewing animated sequences led to slightly higher ratings of the more intensive harvest systems and significantly lower ratings of the selective harvest system than those based on the still images. The interview data provided examples of interviewees viewing information critically against their own values and beliefs. Only some interviewees appeared to use it in judging social acceptability