Entitled to the Earth: Aggrieved Entitlement, Economic Insecurity, and White Men’s Climate Attitudes

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Climate Attitudes, Ideology, and Beliefs

Abstract

Prior studies have found that both economic factors and gendered, racial, nationalist, and reactionary forms of opposition to social equality and diversity influence climate attitudes. Qualitative research proposes using aggrieved entitlement as a theoretical lens for understanding their relations and informs the development of a quantitative measure of aggrieved entitlement. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence using nationally representative data to quantitatively test the concept of aggrieved entitlement and the mechanisms through which economic insecurity and aggrieved entitlement contribute to climate attitudes. Our study furthers research by focusing on white men from the 2020 American National Election Studies (ANES) Time Series Study. We use a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to construct a latent variable for aggrieved entitlement and examine the pathways from economic insecurity (concern for national economy and personal financial anxiety) to aggrieved entitlement and anti-environmental attitudes. Results validated that aggrieved entitlement was measured by reverse racism, reverse sexism, racial resentment, anti-political correctness, and anti-immigration attitudes. More aggrieved entitlement predicted more negative environmental attitudes. Economic concern, but not financial anxiety, predicted more positive environmental attitudes through reduced aggrieved entitlement. The study contributes to the validation of the aggrieved entitlement concept with a national sample and the broader debate on the cultural and economic factors driving the rise of right-wing populism.

Authors

• Saman Seyfi, University of Oklahoma

• Dan Wang, University of Oklahoma