大学生群体中价值观、感知环境质量与环境意识的关系研究

本研究利用一项大学生环境意识调查数据,探讨了价值观、感知环境质量和环境意识之间关系,并对英格尔哈特的“客观问题和主观价值”假设进行检验。研究结果基本支持该假设,后物质主义者比物质主义者的环境意识更强,感知环境质量差者比感知环境质量好者的环境意识更强。此外,研究还发现,感知环境质量比价值观对大学生的环境意识作用更强;感知中国环境质量比感知家乡环境质量对大学生的环境意识作用更强。     

Facilitation of attitude formation through communication: how perceived source expertise enhances the ability to achieve cognitive closure about complex environmental topics

Attitudes on which people have achieved cognitive closure are better predictors of future attitudes and behavior than open attitudes. In two experiments, we found that factors in communication (source identity, source consensus) can enhance people's ability to achieve cognitive closure on complex environmental topics through an increase in perceived source expertise. Results showed that participants perceived higher levels of source expertise and felt better able to achieve cognitive closure on the environmental technology of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) when the information source had an expert identity compared to a non‐expert identity. The communication of consensus by the information source increased the level of expertise ascribed to the non‐expert source, resulting in an enhanced ability to achieve closure.     

A Cross‐Cultural Test of the Value–Attitude–Behavior Hierarchy

According to Homer and Kahle's (1988 ) cognitive hierarchy model, values indirectly influence behavior through attitudes. The model posits that the influence theoretically flows from more abstract cognitions to mid‐range cognitions to specific behaviors. This paper tests the cross‐cultural validity of the model across samples from Brazil, New Zealand, and South Africa. The paper specifically tests whether environmental attitudes would completely mediate the influence of both altruistic and self‐enhancement values on ecological behavior. This study also extended the model by including perceived threats from environmental problems. Supporting the expanded model, environmental attitudes fully mediated the influence of both values and perceived environmental threat on ecological behavior. This article provides empirical support for using the cognitive hierarchy model across cultures.     

There is no such thing as environmental ethics

Engineers and scientists, whose professional responsibilities often influence the natural environment, have sought to develop an environmental ethic that will be in tune with their attitudes toward the non-human environment, and that will assist them in decision making regarding questions of environmental quality. In this paper the classical traditions in normative ethics are explored in an attempt to formulate such an environmental ethic. I conclude, however, that because the discipline of ethics is directed at person-person interactions, ethics as a scholarly discipline does not help us understand how we ought to treat non-human nature. We therefore cannot look to ethics as a source for understanding our attitudes and for providing guidance to our actions with regard to the environment. To do so is to ask too much of ethics. If we are to find an acceptable environmental morality, it must come from a new paradigm. One approach might be to understand our attitudes on the basis of spirituality, modeled after animistic religions.     

An Augmented Risk Information Seeking Model: The Case of Global Warming

This effort argues for an augmented version of the relatively new Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) Model, and subsequently applies this augmented RISP model specifically to environmental risk information seeking. Nearly 830 randomly selected members of a national panel were surveyed about their attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors regarding seeking information about an environmental risk—global warming. Path analysis suggests the promise of applying an augmented RISP model to environmental risk information seeking (R² = .72 for information seeking intent) and reinforces prior research, which indicated the notable contribution that perceived social pressures may have when individuals seek such information (β = .68, p < .001).     

Can we explain why some people do and some people do not act on their intentions?

Behavioural theorists have identified attitudes, perceived norms and self-efficacy as the important determinants of people's intentions to engage in a given behaviour. Because intentions predict behaviour, these same variables also account for a considerable amount of the variation in behaviour. Nevertheless, there is often a substantial proportion of the population who do not act on their intentions. While a recently proposed integrative theory of behaviour suggests that these 'failures' are due either to a lack of skills and/or to the presence of environmental constraints, it has also been argued that the determinants of intention may have a direct, as well as in indirect, effect on behaviour. This paper uses data from a longitudinal study (Project RESPECT) to explore the extent to which attitudes, perceived norms and self-efficacy explain why some people do and others do not act on their intentions to engage in a health protective behaviour. Although the data provide further evidence that these three variables account for a significant proportion of the variance in intentions (and behaviour), they perform poorly when predicting behaviour for persons with pre-existing high intentions. It may be reasonable to ask whether a 'new' theory is needed to explain why some people do, and some people do not, act on their intentions.     

Environmental problems and the use of information: The importance of the policy context

Factual information plays a vital role in public awareness of environmental problems, and in governmental interventions that this awareness provokes. There is a growing need for new information to define and explore these problems, and to allow consequent political decision-making. This article examines the policy process, making a distinction between knowing and deciding. It will become clear that information and policy, both of which arise when a minimal level of problem-consciousness is reached, are the two important prime movers toward a better understanding and acceptance of environmental problems. Attention is given to information management as a prerequisite of communication management to influence attitudes and behavior, and to the role of communication in a total intervention-mix.     

Politics,concern for future generations,and the environment: Generativity mediates political conservatism and environmental attitudes

Climate change and pollution impact those alive today as well as future generations, suggesting that attitudes toward future generations may be linked with environmental attitudes. Despite the widespread impact of the environmental on human lives, there is considerable partisan divide in the United States with regards to environmental issues. We investigated relationships between political conservatism, generativity, and environmental attitudes in two studies (N = 429 and N = 618). Political conservatism was associated with lower pro‐environmental attitudes; however, political conservatism was also associated with higher generativity and had a positive indirect effect on pro‐environmental attitudes through higher generativity. More politically conservative individuals may have greater concern for future life and thereby have more pro‐environmental attitudes even while having lower pro‐environmental attitudes overall. These results likely reflect partisan polarization with regard to environmental issues. Pro‐environmental messages may be more persuasive for conservatives if they are linked to concerns about future generations.     

Precarious and model minorities: Sikh identities in the ‘new’ global politics of religion

ABSTRACT

In many parts of the world, Sikhs have come to be perceived as a ‘model' minority – so much so that some have critiqued the Sikh community for taking up positions that are perceived as assimilationist. Such critiques, however, gloss over the sense of precarity, and the litany of hardships, racial discrimination and legal battles in which Sikhs have been forced to be engage in a post-9/11 world. Ultimately, this discrimination is enabled and justified by historical western notions of the incommensurability of the sacred and secular. Engaging with recent critical debates over the on-going meanings of the sacred and the secular, this paper argues that the contemporary moment requires a cosmopolitan religious outlook. Such debates reveal the separation between the public and the private, and between the sacred and the secular, to be ‘zombie categories' that fail to capture contemporary realities. Hence, conceptualizing Sikh identities as precarious, vulnerable ‘model minorities' in a post-Brexit/Trump era allows us to explore a Sikh ethics underpinned by the universal message of SGGS Ji. This is so because such ethics have never been conceptualized as simply being ‘other-worldly’, but rather as precisely grounded in the world that has been entrusted to us.     

Categories of environmental scenes

Environmental scenes are the settings in which human action occurs; since they constrain behavior, they are of interest to social, personality, and environmental psychologists. Scenes can also be viewed as a spatial generalization of objects, as well as the spatial contexts in which objects appear. As such, they are studied in perception and memory. Previous approaches to characterizing environments have relied on scaling techniques to yield a manageable number of dimensions or attributes by which environments can be compared. In contrast, the present research demonstrates development of a taxonomy of kinds of environmental scenes, where perceived attributes are obtained as a byproduct. A basic or preferred level of categorization in the taxonomy is also identified, based on measures of cognition, behavior, and communication. The basic level, for example, school, home, beach, mountains, corresponds to the level commonly used in the study of scene schemas in perception, memory, and environmental psychology, as well as to the level apparently most useful in other domains of knowledge concerned with environments, for example, architecture and geography.     

Applying social psychology to the study of environmental concern and environmental worldviews: contributions from the social representations approach

Recently some social psychological approaches have intensified their contributions to research in the environmental domain, helping it to focus more consistently on the shared aspects of all environment related experiences. The goal of this paper is that of joining these efforts, exploring the contributions of the social representations approach to research on environmental concern and environmental thought, as another area for applying social psychological knowledge. The paper first sketches how the environmental concern of the publics emerged in the 70s as a problem for the social sciences and proceeds to summarizing the main characteristics of this research, focusing on three problematic areas: (1) incipient theoretical integration among the frameworks dominating research; (2) insufficient reflection about the assumptions and measurement of the concepts employed; (3) a need for new research questions that push studies beyond the analysis of the socio‐demographical correlates of beliefs. Afterwards a presentation of social representations theory will be undertaken and the usefulness of the approach to deal with some aspects of the problematic areas identified will be explored, with examples from recent research, and highlighting the importance of focusing on contradiction, polyphasia, and the articulation of the local and the global. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interpersonal Judgments: Moral Responsibility and Blame

A deterministic perspective, believing choices are a function of hereditary and environmental factors, could theoretically impact perceived moral responsibility and lead to decreased blame in judging others. However, little consistent support has been found relating individual differences in deterministic attitudes to blame/tolerance for others. Perhaps, though, providing information regarding past background hardships affecting an individual's current lifestyle could potentially mediate harsh moralistic judgments of that individual. In the two studies reported here, we further explored the relation of free will/determinism scales to attitudes toward others as well as the effect of manipulating background information on the assignment of blame. As in previous research, little support was found for the relation of deterministic attitudes to tolerance toward others. However, judgments following manipulated information about hypothetical target persons supported the conclusion that target individuals are blamed less and given more sympathy if more information related to previous hardships is provided. In addition, in the second study perceived similarity to a target individual was associated with decreased blame/greater sympathy for a target with alcohol abuse problems.     

Genetic and environmental influences and covariance among meaning in life,religiousness, and spirituality

Meaning in life, spirituality, and religiousness have been empirically linked in previous research. This study aimed to advance knowledge of the interrelations among these variables by examining their heritable and non-heritable sources of influence, as well as the genetic and environmental contributions to their inter-relations. A sample of 343 middle-aged twins drawn from the Minnesota Twin Registry completed measures of meaning in life and spirituality. There was evidence that religiousness, spirituality, and meaning in life shared common genetic and environmental influences, suggesting that these people's attitudes concerning these variables may arise from shared factors. These results provide novel evidence of a shared genetic substrate for meaning in life, religiousness, and spirituality, and support the possibility that people's basic attitudes about the meaning of existence are commonly rooted in evolved biological factors and conjointly influenced through people's experiences with life.     

Beliefs and environmental behavior: The moderating effect of emotional intelligence

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of studies aiming to explain how pro‐environmental behavior is shaped by attitudes, values and beliefs. In this study, we have included an aspect in our analysis that has been rarely touched upon until now, that is, the intelligent use of emotions as a possible component of pro‐environmental behavior. We applied the Trait Meta Mood Scale‐24 (TMMS‐24) and the New Environmental Paradigm scale to a sample of 184 male and female undergraduate students. We also carried out correlation and hierarchical regression analyses of blocks. The results show the interaction effects of the system of environmental beliefs and the dimensions of emotional intelligence on glass recycling attitudes, intentions and behavior. The results are discussed from the perspective of research on how the management of emotions guides thought and behavior.     

Quantitative approaches in environmental studies

Psychological scaling methods can be applied and can bring substantial knowledge to bear upon problems within the realm of environmental hygiene. Methodological issues related to the possibility of obtaining calibrated scales of perceptual variables such as discomfort, annoyance, and unpleasant odors are critical when the scale values are to be entered into a physical pollution index or a perceived environmental quality index, both being applied in the form of norms or recommendations. The level of measurement (ordinal, interval, or ratio scale) is related to the question of calibration of scales. From a practical point of view, the effects of observer-environment dependence are important to disguise in the scale values. Problems having to do with calibration of scales and with application of knowledge about perceptual processes to the scales are being explored in ongoing research projects. These include the measurement of temperature discomfort in different climates and the measurement of annoyance in areas with different noise exposures. Attempts have been made to solve an odorous air pollution problem with psychological measurements.     

Sex differences in environmental concern and knowledge: The case of acid rain

Several theories have been presented that predict differences between women and men in attitudes toward the environment due to differences in sex roles. Research on which these theories can be tested has tended to examine general environmental concern, and the results have generally been weak and inconclusive. Using an approach suggested in the literature, this study examines sex differences in concern and knowledge, using multi-item scales for each, about one environmental issue — acid rain. The results contradict the theories being tested, however: if there is a sex difference, men are found to be more concerned and knowledgeable about the environmental problem.     

Technology and the possibility of global environmental science

Global environmental science, in its current configuration as predominantly interdisciplinary earth systems analysis, owes its existence to technological development in three respects. (1) Environmental impacts of globalization of corporate and military industrial development linked to widespread use of new technologies prompted investigation of ways to understand and anticipate the global nature of such impacts. (2) Extension of the reach of technology itself demands extension of attempts to anticipate and control the environment in which the technology is to function. Thus as the reach becomes global, the environment in question is also global. (3) Such global studies cannot get far without the development of command, control and information technologies (computers, satellites, automated remote sensing devices) which are crucial for data gathering, storage, and analysis and for the simulation modeling, crucial to theory testing and prediction. This network of dependence on technological development gives the global environmental sciences a rather distinctive epistemological profile, one in which some distinctions that we had thought were clear, on the basis of models of classic laboratory sciences (such as those between experiment and deduction or representation and instrument), turn out to be far from clear. In consequence there needs to be a careful evaluation of the extent to which, or the ways in which, these sciences can provide bases for policy decisions.     

Subjectivism and the Framework of Constitutive Grounds

Philosophers have applied the framework of constitutive grounds to make sense of the disagreement between subjectivism and objectivism. The framework understands the two theories as being involved in a disagreement about the extent to which value is determined by attitudes. Although the framework affords us with some useful observations about how this should be interpreted, the question how value can be determined by attitudes in the first place is left largely unanswered. Here we explore the benefits of a positive interpretation which aims to address this oversight and make the framework more informative. This interpretation, which is inspired by the recent work of Schroeder (2007) and Sobel (2016), claims that the relevant sense in which value can be determined by attitudes is discovered by seeing how facts can be endowed with the normative property of being a reason. We argue that this interpretation significantly deepens our understanding of the disagreement between subjectivism and objectivism.     

The dragons of inaction: pychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation

Most people think climate change and sustainability are important problems, but too few global citizens engaged in high-greenhouse-gas-emitting behavior are engaged in enough mitigating behavior to stem the increasing flow of greenhouse gases and other environmental problems. Why is that? Structural barriers such as a climate-averse infrastructure are part of the answer, but psychological barriers also impede behavioral choices that would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental sustainability. Although many individuals are engaged in some ameliorative action, most could do more, but they are hindered by seven categories of psychological barriers, or "dragons of inaction": limited cognition about the problem, ideological world viewsthat tend to preclude pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, comparisons with key other people, sunk costs and behavioral momentum, discredence toward experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and positive but inadequate behavior change. Structural barriers must be removed wherever possible, but this is unlikely to be sufficient. Psychologists must work with other scientists, technical experts, and policymakers to help citizens overcome these psychological barriers.     

Experiencing,caring, coping: Vested interest mediates the effect of past experience on coping behaviors in environmental risk contexts

Social psychology provides a treasure-trove of insights into adaptations that may limit the devastating effects of climate change. Vested Interest Theory may contribute to this knowledge base, suggesting that one's vested interest may significantly influence appropriate coping behaviors, as it is has been shown to enhance the relation between attitudes and self-relevant behaviors. The theory's utility is investigated in an environmental risk context. Here, we replicate previous research findings showing that citizens in high-risk areas perceived higher risk and stronger intentions to cope with it when vested interest perceptions were salient. Furthermore, the current studies investigate the behavioral effect of vested interest on coping with an environmental risk (flooding): results showed that vested interest significantly mediated the past experience–coping behaviors relationship. In Study 1’s mediation analysis (Rome and Vibo Valentia, Italy, N = 466), past experience of flood risk enhanced vested interest in flood risk, which in turn increased volunteering for flood prevention activities, thereby mitigating risk. In Study 2 (N = 391), the same mediation effect was replicated in the Timis region, a high flood risk area in western Romania. These results shed light on literature inconsistencies on this topic, providing insights for the theoretical understanding of the relationship between past experience of a given risk and related coping behaviors, possibly shedding light to the risk perception paradox. These insights may drive effective intervention strategies to enhance people's behavioral coping with environmental risks.