When Economic Growth Competes with Protecting the Environment, Which Do People Choose?

• In Event: 046 - Section on Environment and Technology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Environmental Concern and Worldviews

Abstract

When Economic Growth Competes with Protecting the Environment, Which Do People Choose?
Previous research has shown a number of macro and micro-level predictors of environmental concern for individuals. Yet as other work has indicated, if taken by themselves, items purporting to measure environmental concerns tend to be skewed and not very useful in predicting actual environmentally friendly behavior. In our work, we frame environmental concern in such a way as to account for the priority a person places on environmental protection relative to an often competing concern—in this case the importance of economic growth and job creation. We take our outcome and level 1 predictors from the World Value Survey; our macro level indicators come from a variety of sources. Rather than simply using an environmental concern variable, we consider whether individuals place a higher priority on creating jobs and economic growth relative to protecting the environment. When framing the outcome this way and using HLM analysis, we find significant predictors both at levels 1 and 2. Further, we find significant interactions between macro level indicators--particularly world system position--and a variety of other macro (the Gini coefficient for income inequality and urbanization) and individual level (including a age, gender and socio-economic position) variables. We discuss our findings in light of broader theoretical and practical concerns.

Authors

• Thomas J. Burns, University of Oklahoma

• Martin Piotrowski, University of Oklahoma

• Erik Lawrence Bond, University of Oklahoma

• John T Billington, University of Oklahoma