Social and demographic influences on environmental attitudes

1997

Sociologists have studied environmental attitudes for over two decades. Much of this research has sought to determine what factors are related to these attitudes. Past research has shown that certain social and demographic variables tend to have a positive influence on environmentalism. One of the more valid and reliable indicators of environmentalism is the 12-item attitude scale known as the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP). That scale has been shown to consist of three sub-scales. This paper extends previous research by examining the relative influence of six independent variables (age, gender, race, education, income, and residence) on each of the sub-scales and the overall NEP scale. The analysis generally supports the hypotheses that younger people, women, whites, and people of higher education levels hold more environmental attitudes as measured by the NEP index. Income has a significant nonlinear effect.